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http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/240457278/_/oupblogmedia/#respondThu, 08 Dec 2016 10:30:16 +0000http://blog.oup.com/?p=126334Donald Trump’s surprising victory in the 2016 US Presidential election demonstrated that celebrity is now a political force to be reckoned with. It would seem that this mix of celebrity culture and politics is a relatively new phenomenon, and indeed celebrity itself is often thought to be something distinctly modern. But there were celebrities long before that particular word identified them as such.

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Donald Trump’s surprising victory in the 2016 US Presidential election demonstrated that celebrity is now a political force to be reckoned with. Famous actors such as Ronald Reagan or Arnold Schwarzenegger have held high office in the past in the US, and and Indian film stars such as Jayalalithaa Jayaram or Maruthur Gopalan Ramachandran (popularly known as MGR) translated their fame into successful political careers, but Trump’s victory reveals the power of celebrity name recognition as a force for political mobilization, and has highlighted the theatrical aspects of political performance in our heavily mediated society. Trump’s success has already encouraged other celebrities such as Kanye West and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson to consider making their own presidential bids in the 2020 election. Pundits such as Michael Moore have suggested that the Democratic Party should support a celebrity candidate such as Tom Hanks or Oprah Winfrey as their standard bearer in the future if it wants to find its way back to electoral success.

It would seem that this mix of celebrity culture and politics is a relatively new phenomenon, and indeed celebrity itself is often thought to be something distinctly modern. It’s true that the word ‘celebrity’ didn’t refer to a particular person until around the mid-nineteenth century, and ‘celebrity’ didn’t refer to the experience of fame or popular renown until the later eighteenth century. The French historian Antoine Lilti has referred to celebrity as “a radically new form of renown.” It’s easy to understand why one might think that celebrity has only gradually become a politically potent currency.

But there were celebrities long before that particular word identified them as such, and there was a time when politics made celebrities rather than the other way around. Before the later eighteenth century, the word ‘celebrity’ tended to refer to ceremony. Celebrity was a way of describing the pomp and circumstance that traditionally accompanied important public rituals such as weddings, funerals, and royal processions. Celebrity was intricately linked to the magic, charm, and charisma associated with the church and royalty, and this meant that celebrity was inherently political – contemporary fame was produced by the majesty of royal or spiritual power, or preferably both. It’s important to understand this connection between premodern, ceremonial forms of fame, and their modern successors known as celebrities.

Modern celebrity is in many ways a product of the new publics created by the early modern printing revolution. The mass production of words and images enabled by the printing press allowed people to learn about, and recognize, contemporary figures in hitherto unprecedented ways. This early modern media revolution allowed for kings, queens, and religious leaders such as Martin Luther (1483-1546) or the English Protestant martyrs memorialized by John Foxe (1516/17–1587) to become famous with greater speed and extent than had been possible.

A page from the first edition of John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments, in 1563 by Folger Shakespeare Library Digital Image Collection. CC-BY-SA-4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The political turmoils of early modern England helped to create new celebrities. The most effective means of turning ordinary people into celebrities was through persecution, and particularly through the spectacle of judicial process. Political trials were full-scale media events in early modern England. John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (1563) cultivated an appetite amongst early modern readers for the stories of the tribulations of otherwise ordinary people who were persecuted for their religious beliefs. In the seventeenth century, the stories of people who were prosecuted for political transgressions also garnered a large readership. By the early eighteenth century, these stories would be collected into volumes called State Trials (1719) and they would be reprinted, augmented, and further anthologized right through the nineteenth century. Works such as the State Trials and Foxe’s Acts and Monuments served to preserve for posterity the fame of individuals who had gained notoriety through their persecution.

In some cases, judicial persecution could create a political celebrity. The Tory clergyman, Dr. Henry Sacheverell, was impeached in Parliament for high crimes and misdemeanors in 1710 in response to some intemperate and fiery words he had preached at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Although Sacheverell was found guilty, his punishment was mercifully light – he was simply banned from preaching for three years and his sermon was ordered to be burned – and so he emerged from the experience as a celebrity and a hero for the Tory cause. Sacheverell became perhaps the best known person in England with the exception of the reigning monarch, Queen Anne, and he even took to imitating monarchical practices such as going on a celebrated progress across the country. Religious and political divisions helped to construct a new celebrity.

Perhaps it is too easy to forget that politics has always been at the heart of celebrity. While some historians of celebrity have been inclined to draw a direct line between the London stage of the eighteenth century through to modern-day Hollywood, it is better to remember that the charisma that is at the heart of celebrity has always been as much about power as well as entertainment.

During his presidency, Barack Obama has sometimes been referred to as ‘the first celebrity president’ in which he remodeled the presidency in ways that were more suited to twenty-first century forms of communication, such as social media, and his careful construction of a public persona that resembled likeable film stars more so than aloof policy wonks. While the juxtaposition of the presentation of personality for public entertainment as well as for political leadership has sometimes seemed awkward, theatricality and politics have always been closely related. The election of a former reality TV star to the office of President of the United States of America is less surprising than it might otherwise seem if we recognize the importance of attention grabbing and performance skills are to a highly mediated political culture such as our own.

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]]>http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/240457278/_/oupblogmedia/feed/0dwayne the rock johnson,*Featured,British history,antoine lilti,henry sacheverell,john foxe,Biography,Media,Barack Obama,martin luther,British,celebrity,Brian Cowan,eighteenth century celebrity,State Trials,Online products,Donald Trump,PoliticsDonald Trump’s surprising victory in the 2016 US Presidential election demonstrated that celebrity is now a political force to be reckoned with. Famous actors such as Ronald Reagan or Arnold Schwarzenegger have held high office in the past in the US, and and Indian film stars such as Jayalalithaa Jayaram or Maruthur Gopalan Ramachandran (popularly known as MGR) translated their fame into successful political careers, but Trump’s victory reveals the power of celebrity name recognition as a force for political mobilization, and has highlighted the theatrical aspects of political performance in our heavily mediated society. Trump’s success has already encouraged other celebrities such as Kanye West and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson to consider making their own presidential bids in the 2020 election. Pundits such as Michael Moore have suggested that the Democratic Party should support a celebrity candidate such as Tom Hanks or Oprah Winfrey as their standard bearer in the future if it wants to find its way back to electoral success.
It would seem that this mix of celebrity culture and politics is a relatively new phenomenon, and indeed celebrity itself is often thought to be something distinctly modern. It’s true that the word ‘celebrity’ didn’t refer to a particular person until around the mid-nineteenth century, and ‘celebrity’ didn’t refer to the experience of fame or popular renown until the later eighteenth century. The French historian Antoine Lilti has referred to celebrity as “a radically new form of renown.” It’s easy to understand why one might think that celebrity has only gradually become a politically potent currency.
But there were celebrities long before that particular word identified them as such, and there was a time when politics made celebrities rather than the other way around. Before the later eighteenth century, the word ‘celebrity’ tended to refer to ceremony. Celebrity was a way of describing the pomp and circumstance that traditionally accompanied important public rituals such as weddings, funerals, and royal processions. Celebrity was intricately linked to the magic, charm, and charisma associated with the church and royalty, and this meant that celebrity was inherently political – contemporary fame was produced by the majesty of royal or spiritual power, or preferably both. It’s important to understand this connection between premodern, ceremonial forms of fame, and their modern successors known as celebrities.
Modern celebrity is in many ways a product of the new publics created by the early modern printing revolution. The mass production of words and images enabled by the printing press allowed people to learn about, and recognize, contemporary figures in hitherto unprecedented ways. This early modern media revolution allowed for kings, queens, and religious leaders such as Martin Luther (1483-1546) or the English Protestant martyrs memorialized by John Foxe (1516/17–1587) to become famous with greater speed and extent than had been possible. A page from the first edition of John Foxe's Actes and Monuments, in 1563 by Folger Shakespeare Library Digital Image Collection. CC-BY-SA-4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
The political turmoils of early modern England helped to create new celebrities. The most effective means of turning ordinary people into celebrities was through persecution, and particularly through the spectacle of judicial process. Political trials were full-scale media events in early modern England. John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (1563) cultivated an appetite amongst early modern readers for the stories of the tribulations of otherwise ordinary people who were persecuted for their religious beliefs. In the seventeenth century, the stories of people who were prosecuted for political transgressions also garnered a large readership. By the early ... Donald Trump’s surprising victory in the 2016 US Presidential election demonstrated that celebrity is now a political force to be reckoned with. Famous actors such as Ronald Reagan or Arnold Schwarzenegger have held high office in the past in ... http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/240457278/_/oupblogmedia/http://blog.oup.com/2016/11/press-impact-american-revolution/The impact of the press on the American Revolutionhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OUPblogMedia/~3/Xr66JwMJYBY/
http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/230864184/_/oupblogmedia/#respondTue, 22 Nov 2016 12:30:32 +0000http://blog.oup.com/?p=125953Issues of the press seem increasingly relevant in light of the recent U.S. presidential election. At its best, the press can play a critical role in informing, educating, and shaping the public’s thoughts—just as it did at the time of the nation’s founding. In fact, the press was so crucial in those early days that David Ramsay, one of the first historians of the American Revolution, wrote that: “In establishing American independence, the pen and press had merit equal to that of the sword.”

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Issues of the press seem increasingly relevant in light of the recent U.S. presidential election. At its best, the press can play a critical role in informing, educating, and shaping the public’s thoughts—just as it did at the time of the nation’s founding. In fact, the press was so crucial in those early days that David Ramsay, one of the first historians of the American Revolution, wrote that: “In establishing American independence, the pen and press had merit equal to that of the sword.” To illustrate the influential role of the press in the formation of the United States, we’ve pulled out some interesting highlights from Robert G. Parkinson’s article, “Print, the Press, and the American Revolution,” for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History.

Because of the unstable and fragile notions of unity among the thirteen American colonies, print acted as a binding agent that mitigated the chances that the colonies would not support one another when war with Britain broke out in 1775. Stories that appeared in each paper were “exchanged” from other papers in different cities, creating a uniform effect akin to a modern news wire. The exchange system allowed for the same story to appear across North America, and it provided the Revolutionaries with a method to shore up that fragile sense of unity.

Pamphlets became strategic conveyors of ideas during the imperial crisis

Often written by elites under pseudonyms, pamphlets have long been held up by historians as agents of change in and of themselves—that texts like Thomas Paine’s Common Sense or John Dickinson’s Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, to name two of the most famous, are often seen as actors themselves, driving the resistance movement forward.”

The concept of anonymity transformed during the imperial crisis

Long a key feature of 18th-century print culture, with the republican claims of the patriots, anonymity took on a new significance in print, one that allowed for a broader inclusion of the public, and, by implication, the possibility of greater purchase by the people at large. As a rule, contributors to the newspapers shielded themselves with pseudonyms, often judiciously employed to cast themselves as public defenders (“Populus,” “Salus Populi,” “Rusticus”) or guardians of ancient liberty and virtue (“Mucius Scaevola,” “Cato,” “Nestor,” “Neoptelemus”). As one literary scholar has suggested, by adopting such identities those “guardians” were then not real, individual inhabitants of Boston or Philadelphia, with particular social interests, but universal promoters of republican liberty. Analysts often point to the destruction of the concept of deference—a staple of 18th-century social structure—as a sign of the Revolution’s radicalness.

Printers mediated several fluid and rapidly changing concepts of both their professions and colonial politics before the Revolution. They were the keepers of very important political secrets.

Publishing loyalist pamphlets could have been dangerous for those who opposed the revolution.

Printers mediated several fluid and rapidly changing concepts of both their professions and colonial politics before the Revolution. They were the keepers of very important political secrets. They alone knew who had submitted a manuscript for publication; only they could pierce the republican fiction of anonymity. Often, this position was precarious. As political pressure increased in the 1760s and 1770s, the impulse to throw off these veils was occasionally very strong. Printers periodically found themselves or their property in harm’s way if they refused to bow to the will of angry demands that they confess.

In 1776, when New York Packet printer Samuel Loudon dared to advertise the publication of a pamphlet that answered Tom Paine’s Common Sense and called the “scheme of Independence ruinous and delusive,” the Mechanics Committee, a radical patriot group created in 1774 out of the Sons of Liberty, summoned the printer to explain his behavior and reveal the author’s identity. Loudon refused to tell the committee the Anglican rector of Trinity Church, Charles Inglis, had written the pamphlet, so six members of the committee went to his shop and, in Loudon’s words, “nailed and sealed up the printed sheets in boxes, except a few which were drying in an empty house, which they locked, and took the key with them.” They warned Loudon to stop publishing the pamphlet, or else his “personal safety might be endangered.”

(Loyalists) Mein and Fleeming sought to embarrass the Sons of Liberty … by revealing the caprice and self-interest that they thought really actuated the non-importation boycott the Sons had organized to resist the Townshend Duties. The Chronicle featured fifty-five lists of shipping manifests revealing the names of merchants who broke the non-importation agreement, including many who had actually signed the boycott. In response it was many upset Bostonians who embraced vigilantism this time. Mein and Fleeming had published the lists to suggest the boycott was really an effort to eliminate business competition on the part of merchants sympathetic to the Sons. Now they had to stuff pistols in their pockets to walk the streets of Boston. In October the Boston town meeting condemned Mein as an enemy of his country, and a few days later a large crowd confronted the offending printers on King Street, producing a scuffle that left Mein bruised, Fleeming’s pistol empty, and a few dozen angry Bostonians facing British bayonets. Mein at first took shelter in the guardhouse, but, when Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson did not offer vigorous support, the truculent printer departed for England.

As printers increasingly gave space to contributors who claimed they were unmasking corruption or conspiracy, they aided in the disintegration of established concepts of what kept a press “free.”

The most impassioned publications of the 1760s and 1770s—Dickinson’s Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, the chronicle of soldiers’ abuses known as the “Journal of Occurrences,” Paul Revere’s engraving of the Boston Massacre, and Thomas Hutchinson’s private letters—all centered on revealing or dramatizing the government’s true aims of stripping American colonists of their liberties. There were not two sides to “truth.” Either behind pseudonyms or not, the patriot writers or artists who brought these plots to light claimed they were heroic servants of the people, informants seeking to protect an unwitting public from tyranny’s stealthy advance. This was not a debate. So framed, it was also a difficult position to counter. At the same time, the appearance of each of these “exposés” also represented a choice by the printers themselves. By giving space to the “truth”—and, by extension, to the protection of the people’s rights—they took a side that changed the older values of press freedom forever. A free or open press, they decided, did not have to allow equal space for opposing viewpoints that they characterized as endorsing lies and tyranny.

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]]>http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/230864184/_/oupblogmedia/feed/0History,freedom of the press,*Featured,Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History,american colonies,Samuel Loudon,Media,Boston Massacre,pamphlets,Thomas Hutchinson,American Revolution,pseudonyms,America,Journal of Occurrences,Online products,newspapers,printers,thomas paine,common sense,Sons of LibertyIssues of the press seem increasingly relevant in light of the recent U.S. presidential election. At its best, the press can play a critical role in informing, educating, and shaping the public’s thoughts—just as it did at the time of the nation’s founding. In fact, the press was so crucial in those early days that David Ramsay, one of the first historians of the American Revolution, wrote that: “In establishing American independence, the pen and press had merit equal to that of the sword.” To illustrate the influential role of the press in the formation of the United States, we’ve pulled out some interesting highlights from Robert G. Parkinson’s article, “Print, the Press, and the American Revolution,” for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History.
Because of the unstable and fragile notions of unity among the thirteen American colonies, print acted as a binding agent that mitigated the chances that the colonies would not support one another when war with Britain broke out in 1775. Stories that appeared in each paper were “exchanged” from other papers in different cities, creating a uniform effect akin to a modern news wire. The exchange system allowed for the same story to appear across North America, and it provided the Revolutionaries with a method to shore up that fragile sense of unity.
Pamphlets became strategic conveyors of ideas during the imperial crisis
Often written by elites under pseudonyms, pamphlets have long been held up by historians as agents of change in and of themselves—that texts like Thomas Paine’s Common Sense or John Dickinson’s Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, to name two of the most famous, are often seen as actors themselves, driving the resistance movement forward.”
The concept of anonymity transformed during the imperial crisis
Long a key feature of 18th-century print culture, with the republican claims of the patriots, anonymity took on a new significance in print, one that allowed for a broader inclusion of the public, and, by implication, the possibility of greater purchase by the people at large. As a rule, contributors to the newspapers shielded themselves with pseudonyms, often judiciously employed to cast themselves as public defenders (“Populus,” “Salus Populi,” “Rusticus”) or guardians of ancient liberty and virtue (“Mucius Scaevola,” “Cato,” “Nestor,” “Neoptelemus”). As one literary scholar has suggested, by adopting such identities those “guardians” were then not real, individual inhabitants of Boston or Philadelphia, with particular social interests, but universal promoters of republican liberty. Analysts often point to the destruction of the concept of deference—a staple of 18th-century social structure—as a sign of the Revolution’s radicalness. Printers mediated several fluid and rapidly changing concepts of both their professions and colonial politics before the Revolution. They were the keepers of very important political secrets.
Publishing loyalist pamphlets could have been dangerous for those who opposed the revolution.
Printers mediated several fluid and rapidly changing concepts of both their professions and colonial politics before the Revolution. They were the keepers of very important political secrets. They alone knew who had submitted a manuscript for publication; only they could pierce the republican fiction of anonymity. Often, this position was precarious. As political pressure increased in the 1760s and 1770s, the impulse to throw off these veils was occasionally very strong. Printers periodically found themselves or their property in harm’s way if they refused to bow to the will of angry demands that they confess.
In 1776, when New York Packet printer Samuel Loudon ... Issues of the press seem increasingly relevant in light of the recent U.S. presidential election. At its best, the press can play a critical role in informing, educating, and shaping the public’s thoughts—just as it did at the time of ... http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/230864184/_/oupblogmedia/http://blog.oup.com/2016/11/social-media-tips-everyday-work/10 tips for librarians: embedding social media good practice in your everyday workhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OUPblogMedia/~3/IxyTyEFWPDM/
http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/228645602/_/oupblogmedia/#commentsSat, 19 Nov 2016 11:30:57 +0000http://blog.oup.com/?p=125225Social media is one of the best ways to reach a wide audience in this digital day and age. There are plenty of examples of fantastic feeds being run by librarians, but how can you replicate their success? We asked Claire Pickering, Library Officer at Wakefield Council to share her ten top tips.

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Social media is one of the best ways to reach a wide audience in this digital day and age. There are plenty of examples of fantastic feeds being run by librarians, but how can you replicate their success? We asked Claire Pickering, librarian at Wakefield Libraries in the UK, to share her top 10 tips:

1. Define the audience for your site and play to it

We deliberately themed our social media offering from the beginning, setting up a blog, Facebook, and Twitter. When you have an established audience, however, you may find that the channel has developed an audience different to that you first envisaged, so sometimes you need to alter your focus slightly. We imagined starting off with that our blog would be for readers, our Facebook would be for family events, and our Twitter would be for news, advertising events and online resources, but in fact it’s developed and crossed over in a way we couldn’t have imagined.

2. Don’t overstretch yourself

It’s incredibly tempting to add more channels and not be able to do justice to them. We’ve considered Pinterest, Tumblr, Flickr, and Instagram, and probably will add these in future, but have not gone for a new channel yet as we’ve got enough going on with the present channels, and our staff have taken longer than expected to get used to them.

Average librarian is on 5 twitter lists called “libraries,” 3 called “books,” and 24 called “cats”

Using our new channels has magnified just how bad our static website was in many respects. Our ‘What’s On’ feature and website information were not concise or timely enough. We have spent time fixing this, so now feel that we can link back to our web 1.0 offering without being embarrassed by it!

4. Manage your channels using a dashboard

There are many freebie content aggregators out there, like Hootsuite, or TweetDeck, to help you manage your content and see it all in one place. They ensure you are getting timely notifications of messages and other interactions. Social media is another communication channel for customers to contact you as well, so you have to be listening as well.

5. Use the full potential of social media

Social media channels allow us to not only advertise events and raise awareness of the wide range of information and services we offer, but also to share best practice with others and talk to our peers by liking and commenting. They also allow us to encourage other services and local groups, to fulfill our role as a community signpost by re-blogging or re-tweeting content and directing our customers to other sources, and to get feedback from others through comments and questions. All these functions fit in directly with the library information tradition.

6. Schedule content to save time and brain power

Coax newbie colleagues into contributing to social media channels (and beat your Friday pm brain drain) with pre-made content that builds confidence and combats Twitter fatigue. I have used our regular library events timetable of story-times etc. and created a list of pre-prepared tweets for every day of the week. That way, if either a colleague is short of confidence or my brain has given up on me, I have a handy pre-made list of things I can post that will help promote the service. We also make sure we use the pre-made Tweets and Facebook posts sent by suppliers, e.g. Oxford University Press and W.F. Howes, to promote up to the minute content.

20% of librarians need an app that prevents them posting on social media before having their first dose of morning caffeine

Bringing peers and suppliers into social media conversations can draw upon their follow count to help increase your own. We’ve done this by making a list of all our suppliers and their twitter handles, especially of all the big brand names on Zinio for Libraries, and we’ve followed them in our feed. That way when Marie Claire tweets their new edition it’s a timely reminder that we can promote new content on our feed and cheekily add their handle. We also take note of big name authors and use their handles when promoting new stock. If you are complimentary you can sometimes get an RT which brings in new followers. We recently got an RT and thanks from Jeffrey Archer for a display one of our libraries had put on, which increased staff morale to no end.

8. Seize the zeitgeist and piggyback big campaigns to get more exposure

Most big events that occur in the library year, including the Summer Reading Challenge and Adult Learners’ Week, and publisher promotions like Roald Dahl 100, Shakespeare 500, and World Book Day, have a social media element. It’s a good way to show your followers that you are on the pulse (and indeed still have one).

9. Allow partners to use your channels

You’d be surprised how much this is valued by them and it costs you nothing. Encourage a local author, poet, or reader group to post a guest blog or review, or let a family history society do a Twitter takeover to answer genealogy questions. It’s great community engagement and means less thinking up tweets for you!

10. Have fun on your social media feed

If you can have fun and be creative, you will help break down the negative perception of public libraries that has built up in the last few years, and also act as a disruptive influence by providing beacons of quality online information in a sea of internet flotsam. Join me in positioning libraries a bit closer to the stream of modern media so that we can benefit from its lush waters, and maybe get some more borrowers to notice we are still here doing our thing…only this time with added memes.

And if you ever doubt that anyone is listening to your social media channels, witness Orkney Library and their award-winning feed.

Related Stories

]]>http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/228645602/_/oupblogmedia/feed/1*Featured,social media audience,blogging,digital,marketing,Media,online resources,social media,libraries and technology,Claire Pickering,tumblr,twitter,Hootsuite,Pinterest,social media channels,Online products,facebook,Online Products,Literature,libraries,themed social media,Wakefield CouncilSocial media is one of the best ways to reach a wide audience in this digital day and age. There are plenty of examples of fantastic feeds being run by librarians, but how can you replicate their success? We asked Claire Pickering, librarian at Wakefield Libraries in the UK, to share her top 10 tips:
1. Define the audience for your site and play to it
We deliberately themed our social media offering from the beginning, setting up a blog, Facebook, and Twitter. When you have an established audience, however, you may find that the channel has developed an audience different to that you first envisaged, so sometimes you need to alter your focus slightly. We imagined starting off with that our blog would be for readers, our Facebook would be for family events, and our Twitter would be for news, advertising events and online resources, but in fact it’s developed and crossed over in a way we couldn’t have imagined.
2. Don’t overstretch yourself
It’s incredibly tempting to add more channels and not be able to do justice to them. We’ve considered Pinterest, Tumblr, Flickr, and Instagram, and probably will add these in future, but have not gone for a new channel yet as we’ve got enough going on with the present channels, and our staff have taken longer than expected to get used to them.
Average librarian is on 5 twitter lists called “libraries,” 3 called “books,” and 24 called “cats”
— Fake Library Stats (@FakeLibStats) September 5, 2016
3. Keep your web 1.0 offering up-to-date
Using our new channels has magnified just how bad our static website was in many respects. Our ‘What’s On’ feature and website information were not concise or timely enough. We have spent time fixing this, so now feel that we can link back to our web 1.0 offering without being embarrassed by it!
4. Manage your channels using a dashboard
There are many freebie content aggregators out there, like Hootsuite, or TweetDeck, to help you manage your content and see it all in one place. They ensure you are getting timely notifications of messages and other interactions. Social media is another communication channel for customers to contact you as well, so you have to be listening as well.
5. Use the full potential of social media
Social media channels allow us to not only advertise events and raise awareness of the wide range of information and services we offer, but also to share best practice with others and talk to our peers by liking and commenting. They also allow us to encourage other services and local groups, to fulfill our role as a community signpost by re-blogging or re-tweeting content and directing our customers to other sources, and to get feedback from others through comments and questions. All these functions fit in directly with the library information tradition.
6. Schedule content to save time and brain power
Coax newbie colleagues into contributing to social media channels (and beat your Friday pm brain drain) with pre-made content that builds confidence and combats Twitter fatigue. I have used our regular library events timetable of story-times etc. and created a list of pre-prepared tweets for every day of the week. That way, if either a colleague is short of confidence or my brain has given up on me, I have a handy pre-made list of things I can post that will help promote the service. We also make sure we use the pre-made Tweets and Facebook posts sent by suppliers, e.g. Oxford University Press and W.F. Howes, to promote up to the minute content.
20% of librarians need an app that prevents them posting on social media before having their first dose of morning caffeine
— Fake Library Stats (@FakeLibStats) September 9, 2016
7. Increase your followers with retweets and interactions
Bringing peers and suppliers into social media conversations can draw upon their follow count to help increase your ... Social media is one of the best ways to reach a wide audience in this digital day and age. There are plenty of examples of fantastic feeds being run by librarians, but how can you replicate their success? We asked Claire Pickering, librarian at ... http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/228645602/_/oupblogmedia/http://blog.oup.com/2016/11/luke-cage-black-panther/From Harlem to Wakanda: On Luke Cage and Black Pantherhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OUPblogMedia/~3/YWvu0iQ-Fwg/
http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/224152852/_/oupblogmedia/#respondSat, 12 Nov 2016 11:30:38 +0000http://blog.oup.com/?p=125468While watching the first episode of Luke Cage, I noticed something of a minor miracle. Starting from the amazing opening credits sequence, you could actually count the minutes before a single non-black face graced the screen. Every character of consequence, heroic or villainous, was black. Not only that, they were characters well-versed in blackness, however stereotypical. Fittingly, one of the first real set-pieces is a barbershop.

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While watching the first episode of Luke Cage, I noticed something of a minor miracle. Starting from the amazing opening credits sequence, you could actually count the minutes before a single non-black face graced the screen. Every character of consequence, heroic or villainous, was black. Not only that, they were characters well-versed in blackness, however stereotypical. Fittingly, one of the first real set-pieces is a barbershop. And not just any barbershop, but a barbershop in Harlem with the obligatory chess game, populated with older, venerable black men who dole out wisdom and refuse to swear in the presence of young men getting their shape-ups and who have no time for the old guys’ back-in-the-day talk. It was all there, along with Easter eggs peppered throughout a later discussion of crime literature. When the characters name-dropped Walter Mosley, Donald Goines, and Chester Himes, it felt as though the show’s creators had taken a long look at my own bookshelf.

I witnessed something similar early on in the Ta-Nehisi Coates run of the comic book Black Panther. In issue #1, a renegade member of the Dora Milaje, the royal guard of the fictional Wakanda, says of T’Challa, the country’s king, “No one man should have all that power.” I imagine that when those readers who had fallen in love with Kanye West’s “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” read that line, their hearts burst with recognition.

Both stories offered a new wave of referents for an audience that had formerly thought themselves invisible.

In Black Panther, as in Luke Cage, the cause for celebration lay in watching characters of color battle and love each other, shaping their own destinies. This much is obvious. However, we’ve ultimately only received half of the bounty.

If this effort to bring these characters of color into the mainstream ends with isolated titles segregated from the rest of the Marvel Universe, then the promise remains unfulfilled.

If this effort to bring these characters of color into the mainstream ends with isolated titles segregated from the rest of the Marvel Universe, then the promise remains unfulfilled. Luke Cage’s Harlem is a separate world from the Hell’s Kitchen where Daredevil and Jessica Jones roam. And as long as Harlem never sees or interacts with or is forced to deal with Hell’s Kitchen, then the allegory is merely potential unfulfilled. The true might of representative storytelling lies in recognizing the world’s heterogeneity, in forcing characters to contend with the world around them. As powerful as the image of a bulletproof black man is in 2016, how much more powerful might that image have been had it gained for a chief antagonist a Wilson Fisk bent on gentrification, on remaking New York City in his own image? Whether the bullets that ruin Cage’s bottomless supply of hoodies come from Cottonmouth’s henchmen or the cops on Wilson Fisk’s payroll makes a world of difference. And yet to remove Cottonmouth from Luke Cage would be to deprive the series of its most complex and charming totem of blackness.

Similarly, the latest run of Black Panther, headlined by Coates, holds immense promise and has already delivered fascinating characters and a propulsive story of immense depth. World of Wakanda, the spin-off series to Black Panther written by celebrated novelist and essayist Roxane Gay, promises to deepen this project by putting women at the forefront. That a comic will be front-lined by two queer black women is a wonder in and of itself. That Black Panther and World of Wakanda are helmed by two writers of color who have extensively interrogated notions of blackness and society augments the miracle tenfold. Superheroes are metaphor made flesh. The X-Men, for instance, are hated and feared for something many of them cannot change, any more than one can alter one’s skin color. In writing these comics, Coates and Gay will be simultaneously the flesh and the creators of the metaphor. They have skin in the game, so to speak. Diversity isn’t just what’s on the page. It’s also about who puts it there.

It is this reader’s sincere hope that Marvel will not confine the work of Coates and Gay to Wakanda’s borders. It is this reader’s sincere hope that Marvel will understand that true representation does not end with individual titles focused on marginalized groups, that it entails the work of braiding those stories, our stories, into the rest of its fabric.

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]]>http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/224152852/_/oupblogmedia/feed/0History,pop culture,Ta-Nehisi Coates,AASC,African American Studies,diversity in comics,Arts & Humanities,marvel,Media,comics,Marvel Universe,World of Wakanda,Online products,Luke Cage,characters of color in the mainstream,x-men,TV & Film,Black Panther,humanities,superheroesWhile watching the first episode of Luke Cage, I noticed something of a minor miracle. Starting from the amazing opening credits sequence, you could actually count the minutes before a single non-black face graced the screen. Every character of consequence, heroic or villainous, was black. Not only that, they were characters well-versed in blackness, however stereotypical. Fittingly, one of the first real set-pieces is a barbershop. And not just any barbershop, but a barbershop in Harlem with the obligatory chess game, populated with older, venerable black men who dole out wisdom and refuse to swear in the presence of young men getting their shape-ups and who have no time for the old guys’ back-in-the-day talk. It was all there, along with Easter eggs peppered throughout a later discussion of crime literature. When the characters name-dropped Walter Mosley, Donald Goines, and Chester Himes, it felt as though the show’s creators had taken a long look at my own bookshelf.
I witnessed something similar early on in the Ta-Nehisi Coates run of the comic book Black Panther. In issue #1, a renegade member of the Dora Milaje, the royal guard of the fictional Wakanda, says of T’Challa, the country’s king, “No one man should have all that power.” I imagine that when those readers who had fallen in love with Kanye West’s “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” read that line, their hearts burst with recognition.
Both stories offered a new wave of referents for an audience that had formerly thought themselves invisible.
In Black Panther, as in Luke Cage, the cause for celebration lay in watching characters of color battle and love each other, shaping their own destinies. This much is obvious. However, we’ve ultimately only received half of the bounty. If this effort to bring these characters of color into the mainstream ends with isolated titles segregated from the rest of the Marvel Universe, then the promise remains unfulfilled.
If this effort to bring these characters of color into the mainstream ends with isolated titles segregated from the rest of the Marvel Universe, then the promise remains unfulfilled. Luke Cage’s Harlem is a separate world from the Hell’s Kitchen where Daredevil and Jessica Jones roam. And as long as Harlem never sees or interacts with or is forced to deal with Hell’s Kitchen, then the allegory is merely potential unfulfilled. The true might of representative storytelling lies in recognizing the world’s heterogeneity, in forcing characters to contend with the world around them. As powerful as the image of a bulletproof black man is in 2016, how much more powerful might that image have been had it gained for a chief antagonist a Wilson Fisk bent on gentrification, on remaking New York City in his own image? Whether the bullets that ruin Cage’s bottomless supply of hoodies come from Cottonmouth’s henchmen or the cops on Wilson Fisk’s payroll makes a world of difference. And yet to remove Cottonmouth from Luke Cage would be to deprive the series of its most complex and charming totem of blackness.
Similarly, the latest run of Black Panther, headlined by Coates, holds immense promise and has already delivered fascinating characters and a propulsive story of immense depth. World of Wakanda, the spin-off series to Black Panther written by celebrated novelist and essayist Roxane Gay, promises to deepen this project by putting women at the forefront. That a comic will be front-lined by two queer black women is a wonder in and of itself. That Black Panther and World of Wakanda are helmed by two writers of color who have extensively interrogated notions of blackness and society augments the miracle tenfold. Superheroes are metaphor made flesh. The X-Men, for instance, are hated and feared for something many of them cannot change, any more than one can alter one’s skin color. In ... While watching the first episode of Luke Cage, I noticed something of a minor miracle. Starting from the amazing opening credits sequence, you could actually count the minutes before a single non-black face graced the screen.http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/224152852/_/oupblogmedia/http://blog.oup.com/2016/11/the-economic-effect-of-trumpism/The economic effect of “Trumpism”http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OUPblogMedia/~3/acxd-cmY5qo/
http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/222819482/_/oupblogmedia/#respondThu, 10 Nov 2016 08:30:05 +0000http://blog.oup.com/?p=125517On winning the US Presidential election, Trump’s victory speech confirmed that he would put America first in his policies. That pursuit of America’s interests will permeate US economic and other policies in the years to come. US President Donald Trump's effect on the economy is hard to discern due to a lack of policy detail.

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Trumpism is defined as: (1) the rejection of the current political establishment and the vigorous pursuit of American national interests; (2) a controversial or outrageous statement attributed to Donald Trump.

On winning the US Presidential election, Trump’s victory speech confirmed that he would put America first in his policies. That pursuit of America’s interests will permeate US economic and other policies in the years to come.

US President Donald Trump’s effect on the economy is hard to discern due to a lack of policy detail, but there are three main areas to watch: fiscal, monetary, and foreign including trade policy. In each area, there is potential for significant change. But, as with all public policies, there will be a trade-off that is yet to be dissected. For instance, he’s vowed to double America’s growth rate, critiqued the Fed, and expressed protectionist views. How will he achieve those aims? And at what cost?

Firstly, America’s economic growth has been slower than before the 2008 financial crisis. There are underlying trends that have led economists to debate whether the US, and other advanced economies, are facing “secular stagnation”. It’s a term first coined by Alvin Hansen in the 1930’s and recently revived by Larry Summers, which captures the notion that America may face a slower growth future.

Trumpism’s first aim will be to raise economic growth, and the policy to be deployed to achieve that goal is to cut taxes and reduce regulation. But would that square with his desire to reduce America’s debt? The independent Tax Policy Centre, jointly set up by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, estimates Trump’s plan will double the growth in federal debt.

Will Trump be able to justify that trade-off in his fiscal policy? Of course, his plan to cut business taxes from 35% (which is among the highest in the OECD) to 15% (which would be among the lowest), as well incentives to increase investment, may be welcomed by businesses who voted him into office.

The Tax Policy Centre also concludes that Trump’s plan would actually increase and not decrease the tax burden on middle class Americans, while cutting taxes for the better-off and corporations. Given the stagnant median wages that have squeezed the middle class, economic growth that does not raise incomes for the average American is less than desirable. The American consumer also drives the global economy, so there are wider implications.

Second, and perhaps one that’s important for markets is what happens to the Fed. Trump has criticised the Chair of the US central bank, Janet Yellen, for acting in a politicised manner. It has led to concerns over the independence of the Federal Reserve as well as whether Yellen will remain in post until February 2018.

That adds prolonged uncertainty on top the near-term economic uncertainty caused by the scant details of Trump’s economic plans. The dramatic market movements where the US benchmark stock index, S&P futures, fell so far it hit its bottom limit, as well as the plunge in the value of the dollar reflected the concerns of investors. Indeed, markets have downgraded the prospect of an interest rate rise next month to 50-50.

But the most significant market movements were seen in emerging markets; notably Asian stock markets and the Mexican peso give an indicator of how emerging economy currencies were unsettled by Trump’s foreign and particularly trade policy.

Trump has said that he will revisit trade policy, including withdrawing from NAFTA if the agreement doesn’t benefit America, consistent with his philosophy of putting America first. This is an area where the President has the unilateral power to re-negotiate and even withdraw from trade agreements – congressional approval is needed to enter into free trade agreements (FTAs), but is not required to pull out. The same goes for the imposition of some tariffs, which President George W. Bush did on steel, until he was pulled back by the World Trade Organisation.

In a world economy that it already experiencing weak trade growth, a more protectionist US president is certainly worrying for the rest of the world, many of whom rely on selling to the vast American market. For Asian economies in particular, growth depends a great deal on exports, including to the US.

The immediate reaction to Trump’s surprise victory – polls predicted a Hillary Clinton win when the voting began – was a dramatic fall in global markets, which reflected this surprise but also an underlying concern about where America is headed. Those market declines were moderated as the news sank in.

But what happens next will depend on the policy specifics around Trumpism.

Until we get more detail, there will be economic uncertainty about America, and by extension, the global economy. And that tends to be unsettling.

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]]>http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/222819482/_/oupblogmedia/feed/0economic growth,*Featured,international trade,trade growth,american market,taxes,trump wins election,Trump,Media,exports,trade agreements,American Election,american trade,imports,democratic,Election 2016,president trump,America,Linda Yueh,republican,Social Sciences,economic prospects,Donald Trump,economy,Hillary Clinton,stock market,trade policy,trumpism,world trade organization,Business & Economics,Politics,tradeTrumpism is defined as: (1) the rejection of the current political establishment and the vigorous pursuit of American national interests; (2) a controversial or outrageous statement attributed to Donald Trump.
On winning the US Presidential election, Trump’s victory speech confirmed that he would put America first in his policies. That pursuit of America’s interests will permeate US economic and other policies in the years to come.
US President Donald Trump's effect on the economy is hard to discern due to a lack of policy detail, but there are three main areas to watch: fiscal, monetary, and foreign including trade policy. In each area, there is potential for significant change. But, as with all public policies, there will be a trade-off that is yet to be dissected. For instance, he's vowed to double America's growth rate, critiqued the Fed, and expressed protectionist views. How will he achieve those aims? And at what cost?
Firstly, America’s economic growth has been slower than before the 2008 financial crisis. There are underlying trends that have led economists to debate whether the US, and other advanced economies, are facing “secular stagnation”. It’s a term first coined by Alvin Hansen in the 1930's and recently revived by Larry Summers, which captures the notion that America may face a slower growth future.
Trumpism’s first aim will be to raise economic growth, and the policy to be deployed to achieve that goal is to cut taxes and reduce regulation. But would that square with his desire to reduce America’s debt? The independent Tax Policy Centre, jointly set up by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, estimates Trump’s plan will double the growth in federal debt.
Will Trump be able to justify that trade-off in his fiscal policy? Of course, his plan to cut business taxes from 35% (which is among the highest in the OECD) to 15% (which would be among the lowest), as well incentives to increase investment, may be welcomed by businesses who voted him into office.
The Tax Policy Centre also concludes that Trump’s plan would actually increase and not decrease the tax burden on middle class Americans, while cutting taxes for the better-off and corporations. Given the stagnant median wages that have squeezed the middle class, economic growth that does not raise incomes for the average American is less than desirable. The American consumer also drives the global economy, so there are wider implications. Donald Trump, by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr
Second, and perhaps one that’s important for markets is what happens to the Fed. Trump has criticised the Chair of the US central bank, Janet Yellen, for acting in a politicised manner. It has led to concerns over the independence of the Federal Reserve as well as whether Yellen will remain in post until February 2018.
That adds prolonged uncertainty on top the near-term economic uncertainty caused by the scant details of Trump’s economic plans. The dramatic market movements where the US benchmark stock index, S&P futures, fell so far it hit its bottom limit, as well as the plunge in the value of the dollar reflected the concerns of investors. Indeed, markets have downgraded the prospect of an interest rate rise next month to 50-50.
But the most significant market movements were seen in emerging markets; notably Asian stock markets and the Mexican peso give an indicator of how emerging economy currencies were unsettled by Trump’s foreign and particularly trade policy.
Trump has said that he will revisit trade policy, including withdrawing from NAFTA if the agreement doesn’t benefit America, consistent with his philosophy of putting America first. This is an area where the President has the unilateral power to re-negotiate and even withdraw from trade agreements – congressional approval is needed to enter into free trade agreements ... Trumpism is defined as: (1) the rejection of the current political establishment and the vigorous pursuit of American national interests; (2) a controversial or outrageous statement attributed to Donald Trump.
On winning the US Presidential ... http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/222819482/_/oupblogmedia/http://blog.oup.com/2016/11/hyper-normalisation-democracy-documentary/The nothingness of hyper-normalisationhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OUPblogMedia/~3/KxDz8ak0o1c/
http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/220937974/_/oupblogmedia/#commentsSun, 06 Nov 2016 11:30:11 +0000http://blog.oup.com/?p=125371In recent years my academic work has revolved around the analysis of two main concepts: ‘hyper-democracy’ and ‘normality.’ The former in relation to the outburst of forms and tools of democratic engagement in a historical period defined by anti-political sentiment; the latter relating to the common cry of those disaffected democrats – ‘why can’t politicians just be normal?

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In recent years my academic work has revolved around the analysis of two main concepts: ‘hyper-democracy’and ‘normality.’ The former in relation to the outburst of forms and tools of democratic engagement in a historical period defined by anti-political sentiment; the latter relating to the common cry of those disaffected democrats – ‘why can’t politicians just be normal?’ Not only are these topics rarely discussed in the same breadth, they are also hardly likely to form key elements of any primetime broadcasting schedule. But miracles do happen, and the highlight of past month was the broadcast of Adam Curtis’s latest documentary on the topic of ‘Hyper-Normalisation.’ But just like democratic politics, hope and excitement were quickly followed by dejection and despair.

Over the past decade thousands of University of Sheffield undergraduates have been intellectually nourished by the work of Adam Curtis, as his documentaries provide a wonderful way of grounding and understanding a range of historical themes and intellectual positions. The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom (2007) is a fiercely acute and direct analysis of modern social development. It is not a comedy and the production style is raw and direct. The style is journalism as provocation as documentary. As AA Gill wrote in a recent review of Hyper-Normalisation ‘Curtis is a singular social montagist: no one else does his thing.’

But what exactly is ‘his thing’ and why does it matter?

To capture ‘his thing’ is to identify both an art form and an argument. The documentary art form is itself constantly evolving, with films embracing archive clips, interviews, aerial shots, advertisements embedded in a narrative that uses powerful sound effects to capture the raw emotion of the visual images. The viewer is almost ground down through a relentless over-stimulation of the senses in an attempt to make one simple argument: political elites will always try to impose a controlling ideology in their time, and the consequences of this has reached tragi-comic proportions. The existence of a dominant political ideology that controls and shapes the thoughts, beliefs, and actions of the masses lies at the root of Curtis’s art. He is a docu-revolutionary who holds firm to the belief that the world is shaped by big ideas, many of which need to be exorcised for the good of society. Curtis, as the exorcist, and with his films are the tool he uses to expose the existence of ideological forces that benefit the few and certainly not the many.

In a world plagued by increasing forms of social, economic, cultural – even intellectual – homogeneity there must always be a place for those creative rebels like Curtis who possess a rare capacity for mapping out a broad historical and global terrain. His work is mischievous, deconstructive and endlessly creative, in many ways public service broadcasting at its most sublime and valuable. For a man that got his first job in television finding singing dogs for Esther Rantzen’s That’s Life in the 1980s, his professional journey is as remarkable as his films.

But I cannot help but wonder whether Adam Curtis may have fallen into a trap of his own making. Or, put slightly differently, if the style of the art is now limiting the substance in at least two ways. Hyper-Normalisation is an epic endeavor consisting of ten chapters spread over nearly three-hours of content. It covers forty years of nearly everything, everywhere. From artificial intelligence to suicide bombing, and from cyberspace to the LSD counterculture of the 1960s, everything is, for Curtis, part of a universe built upon trickery and plot. The problem is that the connections between the themes and events (the chapters) becomes ever more opaque and tenuous, the viewer understands that an argument is being made but the contours remain fuzzy and the detail unspecified. If topographically translated, then Hyper-Normalisation would be a map that outlined the highest mountains and the deepest seas, but little in between.

Whether the medium is blocking the message is one issue. A second is the normative content of the message. It is undeniably negative, almost nihilistic. It grinds and grates by offering a familiar tale of ideological control and hegemony, but little in terms of any understanding of how change may occur. The nothingness of hyper-normalisation is recounted but not challenged: ‘nothing to learn, nothing to make, no hope of change’ as AA Gill put it. Curtis may well retort that to expose is by definition to challenge and to some extent I would agree but the risk with a ‘Curtisian’ analysis as currently and consistently circulated is that it provides nothing in terms of charting a way out of the trap that it so insightfully exposes.

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]]>http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/220937974/_/oupblogmedia/feed/5*Featured,hyper-democracy,documentary film,Political Spike with Matthew Flinders,Defending Politics,adam curtis,Hyper-Normalisation,Media,Books,journalism,Why Democracy Matters in the 21st Century,political ideology,Social Sciences,documentary,democracy,political spike with matthew flinders,Politics,TV & Film,AA GillIn recent years my academic work has revolved around the analysis of two main concepts: ‘hyper-democracy’ and ‘normality.’ The former in relation to the outburst of forms and tools of democratic engagement in a historical period defined by anti-political sentiment; the latter relating to the common cry of those disaffected democrats – ‘why can’t politicians just be normal?’ Not only are these topics rarely discussed in the same breadth, they are also hardly likely to form key elements of any primetime broadcasting schedule. But miracles do happen, and the highlight of past month was the broadcast of Adam Curtis’s latest documentary on the topic of ‘Hyper-Normalisation.’ But just like democratic politics, hope and excitement were quickly followed by dejection and despair.
Over the past decade thousands of University of Sheffield undergraduates have been intellectually nourished by the work of Adam Curtis, as his documentaries provide a wonderful way of grounding and understanding a range of historical themes and intellectual positions. The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom (2007) is a fiercely acute and direct analysis of modern social development. It is not a comedy and the production style is raw and direct. The style is journalism as provocation as documentary. As AA Gill wrote in a recent review of Hyper-Normalisation ‘Curtis is a singular social montagist: no one else does his thing.’
But what exactly is ‘his thing’ and why does it matter?
To capture ‘his thing’ is to identify both an art form and an argument. The documentary art form is itself constantly evolving, with films embracing archive clips, interviews, aerial shots, advertisements embedded in a narrative that uses powerful sound effects to capture the raw emotion of the visual images. The viewer is almost ground down through a relentless over-stimulation of the senses in an attempt to make one simple argument: political elites will always try to impose a controlling ideology in their time, and the consequences of this has reached tragi-comic proportions. The existence of a dominant political ideology that controls and shapes the thoughts, beliefs, and actions of the masses lies at the root of Curtis’s art. He is a docu-revolutionary who holds firm to the belief that the world is shaped by big ideas, many of which need to be exorcised for the good of society. Curtis, as the exorcist, and with his films are the tool he uses to expose the existence of ideological forces that benefit the few and certainly not the many. TV by Sven Scheuermeier. Public domain via Unsplash.
In a world plagued by increasing forms of social, economic, cultural – even intellectual – homogeneity there must always be a place for those creative rebels like Curtis who possess a rare capacity for mapping out a broad historical and global terrain. His work is mischievous, deconstructive and endlessly creative, in many ways public service broadcasting at its most sublime and valuable. For a man that got his first job in television finding singing dogs for Esther Rantzen’s That’s Life in the 1980s, his professional journey is as remarkable as his films.
But I cannot help but wonder whether Adam Curtis may have fallen into a trap of his own making. Or, put slightly differently, if the style of the art is now limiting the substance in at least two ways. Hyper-Normalisation is an epic endeavor consisting of ten chapters spread over nearly three-hours of content. It covers forty years of nearly everything, everywhere. From artificial intelligence to suicide bombing, and from cyberspace to the LSD counterculture of the 1960s, everything is, for Curtis, part of a universe built upon trickery and plot. The problem is that the connections between the themes and events (the chapters) becomes ever more opaque and tenuous, the ... In recent years my academic work has revolved around the analysis of two main concepts: ‘hyper-democracy’ and ‘normality.’ The former in relation to the outburst of forms and tools of democratic engagement in a historical ... http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/220937974/_/oupblogmedia/http://blog.oup.com/2016/10/open-access-research-in-action/Discussing Open Access in actionhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OUPblogMedia/~3/Mq6wHhGZgY4/
http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/215483864/_/oupblogmedia/#respondMon, 24 Oct 2016 08:30:48 +0000http://blog.oup.com/?p=124462The 24 October marks the beginning of International Open Access Week 2016. This year, the theme is “Open in Action” which attempts to encourage all stakeholders to take further steps to make their work more openly available and encourages others to do the same. In celebration of this event, we asked some of our Journal Editors to discuss their commitments to Open Access (OA).

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The 24 October marks the beginning of International Open Access Week 2016. This year, the theme is “Open in Action” which attempts to encourage all stakeholders to take further steps to make their work more openly available and encourages others to do the same.

In celebration of this event, we asked some of our Journal Editors to discuss their commitments to Open Access (OA) and how they support their colleagues in making research more accessible.

* * * * *

“Open Access benefits those based in low- and middle-income countries to be able to access, download, and disseminate research in the field and in their countries. Health Policy and Planning is committed to continue working with OA and continuing to collaborate with organisations in support of OA in the future.”

“My laboratory and I believe that all published papers eventually gather the attention (or notoriety) that they deserve, especially from the people who are most interested in a paper’s particular field of study. For that reason, we think much more about the quality and reliability of our results than about the ultimate publication destination for any particular manuscript. When we do decide to write up and publish, we strongly favour Open Access solutions and corresponding open release and access to our primary data. Following a policy of openness at all times has never failed to reward us after publication through the interest and feedback from colleagues and competitors in our chosen field.”

“In my experience Open Access papers are more widely read, shared, and cited than those behind paywalls, particularly in poor or middle-income countries. And OA is of particular importance during viral outbreaks, such as Zika and Ebola, which is a topic that Virus Evolution covers.”

“It is official, we now live on an urban planet. Urban dwellers everywhere are experiencing unprecedented social and ecological changes as a result of urban population growth. Over the last 25 years there has been an emergence of what I refer to as ‘urban practitioners’ which includes architects, engineers, landscape architects, urban planners, park and land managers, urban ecologists, social scientists, and policy makers to name few. In an effort to create more liveable cities they are employing evidence based research and information into their work. Much of this information is published in peer reviewed journals that are not accessible to many of these ‘urban practitioners’ who function outside academic institutions. Providing Open Access of this critical information would facilitate the creation of more liveable cities in the future.

“In addition, as new cities are created, especially in developing countries, they also face formidable challenges regarding energy, water, waste management, pollution, and food production. Fortunately, there is a vast knowledge base that exists within our libraries and electronic databases created by engineers, designers, planners, ecologists, social scientists and educators who built, manage, and study our well established cities which are primarily located in the developed northern temperate regions of our planet. Unfortunately, much of this information is unavailable to ‘urban practitioners’ in developing countries because they cannot afford access to these resources. Providing Open Access to the information published on existing cities would greatly assist developing countries in addressing their future challenges resulting from their growing urban population.”

“The benefits of scholarship in general, and research funded by society in particular should be freely available. I believe that the world of scientific publishing needs to respond to this challenge and I am delighted to take on the role of editor in chief of an Open Access journal with a clear focus on making medicine accessible – not just to the medical community – but also to patients. We plan to encourage our colleagues to submit to Open Access journals where their work can reach beyond an elite group of professionals who can afford to pay access charges. We believe that this will allow both lay and professional readers across the world to share the excitement of scientific discovery. The question is not whether Open Access publication has a future – the question is how we, as a community, work together to shape it.”

“Open Access journals are the future for scientific publishing, it is only a matter of time until all journals will be Open Access. Access through print is disappearing and scientists today access nearly everything online. The traditional selection of specific journals due to subscription rates and impact is gone, as citations and simply access by all scientists has no limitations in Open Access journals. Although you may disagree with the shift in publishing, the paradigm shift has occurred.”

“One of the most compelling things about the Open Access movement is how it continues to inspire people into taking action and how it compels all parties to change our established ideas of scholarly communication. The call to action has seen responses from the entire spectrum of scholarly research, from individuals such as Joseph McArthur and David Carroll (inventors of the Open Access Button), to funders and political entities like the EU Competitiveness Council calling for immediate open access for scientific papers by 2020, and publishers having to develop new platforms to meet an increasing demand for more access to research and data. Amongst all of this action we are finding ever more interesting and novel innovations that are helping make scholarly communication an increasingly open process.”

— Nikul Patel, OUP Open Access Publisher

Featured image: Open Book library by lil_foot_. Public Domain via Pixabay.

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]]>http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/215483864/_/oupblogmedia/feed/0OUP Medical Journals,*Featured,international open access week,Nikul Patel,Journals,Sandra Mounier-Jack,Mark J McDonnell,Michael Skinner,open access week,Open Access,Siladitya Bhattacharya,Media,Oliver Pybus,earth and life sciences,Education,Barry Stoddard,open access journals,Open in Action,academic journals,oxford open accessThe 24 October marks the beginning of International Open Access Week 2016. This year, the theme is “Open in Action” which attempts to encourage all stakeholders to take further steps to make their work more openly available and encourages others to do the same.
In celebration of this event, we asked some of our Journal Editors to discuss their commitments to Open Access (OA) and how they support their colleagues in making research more accessible.
* * * *
“Open Access benefits those based in low- and middle-income countries to be able to access, download, and disseminate research in the field and in their countries. Health Policy and Planning is committed to continue working with OA and continuing to collaborate with organisations in support of OA in the future.”
— Sandra Mouiner-Jack, Editor-in-Chief of Health Policy and Planning
* * * *
“My laboratory and I believe that all published papers eventually gather the attention (or notoriety) that they deserve, especially from the people who are most interested in a paper's particular field of study. For that reason, we think much more about the quality and reliability of our results than about the ultimate publication destination for any particular manuscript. When we do decide to write up and publish, we strongly favour Open Access solutions and corresponding open release and access to our primary data. Following a policy of openness at all times has never failed to reward us after publication through the interest and feedback from colleagues and competitors in our chosen field.”
— Barry Stoddard, Senior Executive Editor of Nucleic Acids Research
* * * *
“In my experience Open Access papers are more widely read, shared, and cited than those behind paywalls, particularly in poor or middle-income countries. And OA is of particular importance during viral outbreaks, such as Zika and Ebola, which is a topic that Virus Evolution covers.”
— Oliver Pybus, Editor-in-Chief of Virus Evolution
* * * *
“It is official, we now live on an urban planet. Urban dwellers everywhere are experiencing unprecedented social and ecological changes as a result of urban population growth. Over the last 25 years there has been an emergence of what I refer to as ‘urban practitioners’ which includes architects, engineers, landscape architects, urban planners, park and land managers, urban ecologists, social scientists, and policy makers to name few. In an effort to create more liveable cities they are employing evidence based research and information into their work. Much of this information is published in peer reviewed journals that are not accessible to many of these ‘urban practitioners’ who function outside academic institutions. Providing Open Access of this critical information would facilitate the creation of more liveable cities in the future.
“In addition, as new cities are created, especially in developing countries, they also face formidable challenges regarding energy, water, waste management, pollution, and food production. Fortunately, there is a vast knowledge base that exists within our libraries and electronic databases created by engineers, designers, planners, ecologists, social scientists and educators who built, manage, and study our well established cities which are primarily located in the developed northern temperate regions of our planet. Unfortunately, much of this information is unavailable to ‘urban practitioners’ in developing countries because they cannot afford access to these resources. Providing Open Access to the information published on existing cities would greatly assist developing countries in addressing their future challenges resulting from their growing urban population.”
— ... The 24 October marks the beginning of International Open Access Week 2016. This year, the theme is “Open in Action” which attempts to encourage all stakeholders to take further steps to make their work more openly available and ... http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/215483864/_/oupblogmedia/http://blog.oup.com/2016/10/national-treasure-wrongly-accused/What if they are innocent? Justice for people accused of sexual and child abusehttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OUPblogMedia/~3/okfvKu8EWp8/
http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/214385798/_/oupblogmedia/#commentsFri, 21 Oct 2016 08:30:26 +0000http://blog.oup.com/?p=124663Many people watching UK television drama National Treasure will have made their minds up about the guilt or innocence of the protagonist well before the end of the series. In episode one we learn that this aging celebrity has ‘slept around’ throughout his long marriage but when an allegation of non-recent sexual assault is made he strenuously denies it.

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Many people watching the UK television drama National Treasure will have made their minds up about the guilt or innocence of the protagonist well before the end of the series. In episode one we learn that this aging celebrity has ‘slept around’ throughout his long marriage but when an allegation of non-recent sexual assault is made he strenuously denies it. His wife knows about his infidelities and chooses to believe him, but his daughter, who for years has struggled with mental ill-health, substance abuse problems and fractured relationships, seems to be troubled by memories from her childhood. As the episodes unfold, the series gives the audience chance to be judge and jury, employing whatever bits of information are available to them and, not least, their own prior assumptions about such cases.

Reporting of sexual abuse has soared in recent years, boosted by encouragement to ‘come forward’ with assurances of anonymity, developments towards mandatory reporting, and by publicity given to shocking cases. National Treasure is reminiscent of several celebrities pursued under Operation Yewtree from which there have been varied outcomes, and trials of former staff in children’s homes and residential schools for juvenile offenders, as well as of priests, doctors and others whose work has given them access to children and positions of authority. The respectability of their roles is now taken as an extra indicator that allegations are true because they have had the power to exploit those under their authority and to deceive others.

Cases of sexual abuse, especially non-recent cases, are particularly difficult because there is no crime scene or physical trace. In the absence of definitive evidence, the verdict is more likely to be influenced by the impressions made by the accused and the complainants, the relative persuasiveness of the prosecution and defence barristers, and the views that jury members already hold about what typically occurs in such cases. Individual jury members may be more emotionally predisposed to believe one party over the other, following personal experience or empathy with victims of abuse or with victims of wrongful allegations, supported by cultural narratives that they find persuasive, and depending on which form of injustice most enrages them and that they want addressed.

Cases of sexual abuse, especially non-recent cases, are particularly difficult because there is no crime scene or physical trace.

Jimmy Savile too had been described as a ‘national treasure’, as had Rolf Harris, now serving a prison sentence. The case against Savile became the exception to prove the rule that allegations of historical abuse should be believed at the expense of the ‘presumption of innocence until proven guilty’. The avalanche of complaints against Savile was quickly followed by further claims of uncovered historical institutional abuse, implicating senior politicians. True or not, these have served as signal crimes, galvanising moral panics and a political will to address them. Theresa May, then Home Secretary, announced in Parliament,

“I believe the whole House will also be united in sending this message to victims of child abuse. If you have suffered and you go to the police about what you have been through, those of us in positions of authority and responsibility will not shirk our duty to support you. We must do everything in our power to do everything we can to help you…”

Sir Keir Starmer, then the Director of Public Prosecutions, was critical of an ‘overcautious approach’ in the policing and prosecution of reported sexual offences. Explaining that ‘We cannot afford another Savile moment’ he called for a collective approach and national consensus that

“a clear line now needs to be drawn in the sand and we need to redouble our efforts to improve the criminal justice response to sexual offending.”

The collective remorse for failing to report suspicions or to believe claims of abuse in the past and wanting to recognise and learn from past mistakes has, many argue, led to over-correction and confirmation bias. Believing the victim has become a moral imperative; this includes accepting people as victims on face-value and carrying forward that implication in the treatment of them as witnesses, and as vulnerable, in need of protection. In real life, the celebrity in a National Treasure is more likely to be found guilty given the climate of public opinion. His accusers would be referred to as victim, and as the subject of police enquiries he would certainly experience huge damage to his professional and personal life. If found guilty, such serious offences would warrant a long custodial sentence.

To some extent, raising the spectre of false allegations has become contentious because it involves questioning the credibility and honesty of complainants, and requires them to give evidence that can be experienced as ‘re-victimising’. Cases in which the defendant is found ‘not guilty’ can create cognitive dissonance for victims’ advocates because it requires them to entertain the possibilities that: people may be motivated to ‘come forward’ for various reasons, such as persuasion by others, the prospect of a new identity as a survivor, and praise for being a brave person whose past failures can be attributed to abuse, or the prospect of financial compensation. Without acknowledging those and other possibilities false allegations can safely be dismissed as rare.

Maybe we also need to make more room for doubt and middle ground in some cases, instead of zealous certainty.

I’m writing this before the final episode of the television drama. Some viewers have suggested that an ambiguous ending would be the brave option, and I agree. Maybe we also need to make more room for doubt and middle ground in some cases, instead of zealous certainty. Researching this subject, I have met many people who claim they have been falsely accused, and while one can make an informed hunch based on detailed facts, narrative and getting to know the character of the person concerned, there are others where one has no idea whether the individual is innocent or guilty. If there is no physical evidence how can we know for sure? There are people who, because they live alone or are non-conformist, like Christopher Jefferies, may become suspects and be wrongly arrested and charged, but unlike the more fortunate Mr Jeffries, they cannot hope for DNA evidence to absolve them.

That black hole for proof of guilt or innocence is central to the tragedy in such cases: that we can never know for sure and the individuals are left under a cloud of suspicion, that they lied, that they did something wicked. There are other cases where we may feel much more confident but can be shown to be wrong: apparent villains may have a heart of gold; respected people in public office may have a private life that is reprehensible or shows hypocrisy. The recent revelations about the private pursuits of Keith Vaz MP and his wife’s unawareness validates arguments that people can have a side to their life or have predilections that those closest to them know nothing about. I’m acutely aware that even acknowledging such instances lays more people open to suspicion if they are accused of such behaviour, making it even more difficult for ‘actually innocent’ people to ever be believed if they are wrongly accused.

It should always be remembered that one case does not fit all. There is also a need for more public recognition of wide differences in types of sexual offences and in the degree of suffering caused, and the folly of lumping all sex offenders together as evil predators who always subject their victims to catastrophic, life-long damage.

Related Stories

]]>http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/214385798/_/oupblogmedia/feed/3National Treasure,Ros Burnett,*Featured,Media,sex offenders,WASCA,Wrongful Allegations of Sexual and Child Abuse,Books,Law,The press,sex abuse,child abuse,television,legal trial,sexual abuse,TV & Film,criminology,false allegationsMany people watching the UK television drama National Treasure will have made their minds up about the guilt or innocence of the protagonist well before the end of the series. In episode one we learn that this aging celebrity has ‘slept around’ throughout his long marriage but when an allegation of non-recent sexual assault is made he strenuously denies it. His wife knows about his infidelities and chooses to believe him, but his daughter, who for years has struggled with mental ill-health, substance abuse problems and fractured relationships, seems to be troubled by memories from her childhood. As the episodes unfold, the series gives the audience chance to be judge and jury, employing whatever bits of information are available to them and, not least, their own prior assumptions about such cases.
Reporting of sexual abuse has soared in recent years, boosted by encouragement to ‘come forward’ with assurances of anonymity, developments towards mandatory reporting, and by publicity given to shocking cases. National Treasure is reminiscent of several celebrities pursued under Operation Yewtree from which there have been varied outcomes, and trials of former staff in children’s homes and residential schools for juvenile offenders, as well as of priests, doctors and others whose work has given them access to children and positions of authority. The respectability of their roles is now taken as an extra indicator that allegations are true because they have had the power to exploit those under their authority and to deceive others.
Cases of sexual abuse, especially non-recent cases, are particularly difficult because there is no crime scene or physical trace. In the absence of definitive evidence, the verdict is more likely to be influenced by the impressions made by the accused and the complainants, the relative persuasiveness of the prosecution and defence barristers, and the views that jury members already hold about what typically occurs in such cases. Individual jury members may be more emotionally predisposed to believe one party over the other, following personal experience or empathy with victims of abuse or with victims of wrongful allegations, supported by cultural narratives that they find persuasive, and depending on which form of injustice most enrages them and that they want addressed. Cases of sexual abuse, especially non-recent cases, are particularly difficult because there is no crime scene or physical trace.
Jimmy Savile too had been described as a ‘national treasure’, as had Rolf Harris, now serving a prison sentence. The case against Savile became the exception to prove the rule that allegations of historical abuse should be believed at the expense of the ‘presumption of innocence until proven guilty’. The avalanche of complaints against Savile was quickly followed by further claims of uncovered historical institutional abuse, implicating senior politicians. True or not, these have served as signal crimes, galvanising moral panics and a political will to address them. Theresa May, then Home Secretary, announced in Parliament,
“I believe the whole House will also be united in sending this message to victims of child abuse. If you have suffered and you go to the police about what you have been through, those of us in positions of authority and responsibility will not shirk our duty to support you. We must do everything in our power to do everything we can to help you…”
Sir Keir Starmer, then the Director of Public Prosecutions, was critical of an ‘overcautious approach’ in the policing and prosecution of reported sexual offences. Explaining that ‘We cannot afford another Savile moment’ he called for a collective approach and national consensus that
“a clear line now needs to be drawn in the sand and we need to redouble our efforts to improve the criminal justice ... Many people watching the UK television drama National Treasure will have made their minds up about the guilt or innocence of the protagonist well before the end of the series. In episode one we learn that this aging celebrity has ‘http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/214385798/_/oupblogmedia/http://blog.oup.com/2016/10/frankfurt-business-book-fair/Beyond business and the book fair: exploring Frankfurthttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OUPblogMedia/~3/hthYFHq6GqQ/
http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/211287736/_/oupblogmedia/#commentsFri, 14 Oct 2016 11:30:23 +0000http://blog.oup.com/?p=124605The world’s biggest book fair is opening its doors soon and, as a native “Frankfurter” working in the publishing industry, it's the time of year that my colleagues start asking me about my hometown. Sadly, the most common thing I hear is that there is little that they know beyond Frankfurt airport and the exhibition centre.

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The world’s biggest book fair is opening its doors soon and, as a native “Frankfurter” working in the publishing industry, it’s the time of year that my colleagues start asking me about my hometown. Sadly, the most common thing I hear is that there is little that they know beyond Frankfurt airport and the exhibition centre.

So for those who return to Frankfurt book fair year after year, I hope to inspire you get out and explore my beautiful native city!

Frankfurt city centre – viewpoints and museums:

The first and most obvious sight when heading into Frankfurt is the city’s skyline, and many heads turn towards the skyscrapers when arriving. Why not take a ride up to the Main Tower viewing platform or its restaurant for a bird’s eye view? Picturesque sights of the city can also be enjoyed from Eiserner Steg. This bridge close to the “Römer,” the town square, leads across the River Main and is at one end of Frankfurt’s museum embankment. This is home to the famous Städel, a prominent fine art museum, the German Film Museum, and the German Architecture Museum, as well as other renowned museums.

On the opposite side of the river, right by the“Römer,” is Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. This hosts visiting art exhibitions and right next to it you’ll find the historic “Dom,” Frankfurt’s cathedral, which is well worth a visit, too.

An oasis in the city – “Palmengarten” and “Holzhausenschlösschen”:

If you’re looking for a breath of fresh air, you may prefer to head north-west of the city centre, where the “Palmengarten” (literally “palm garden”) lies, with its fascinating big greenhouses, beautiful water–lily pond, and lush vast grounds. You can spend hours there or simply enjoy a coffee in its lovely on-site café. Also quite central, slightly north of the centre, is the charming and historic “Holzhausenschlösschen,” a pretty baroque style water-moat castle. Both “Palmengarten” and “Holzhausenschlösschen,” offer an extensive cultural programme in the form of concerts, exhibitions and readings in their appealing settings.

Another way of finding some peace and quiet could be to simply take a stroll along the River Main. The centrally accessible riverside allows you to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city and find a more serene spot with a great view across the water to the skyline beyond. Alternatively, Frankfurt has many cafés, “Konditors” (the German equivalent of a “Patisserie”), ice cream parlours and bakeries, dotted around the central area where coffee and cake or ice cream sundaes can be consumed. You may want to try a piece of “Frankfurter Kranz,” a sponge-type cake much loved by the locals. If you want to browse book titles, head into one of the small independent book shops or into the more commercial “Hugendubel” in the main shopping area.

Literary and cultural Frankfurt:

If a more literary exploration of Frankfurt appeals, (fitting for a visitor to the book fair), head to Goethe House, the famous author’s birthplace, in the first instance. Other renowned authors whose roots that can be tracked to Frankfurt include Anne Frank, whose memory is honoured in her birthplace by marked places of remembrance, including the educational centre Anne Frank, and Heinrich Hoffmann. The latter’s most famous character is paid homage to in the Struwelpeter Museum, worth a visit for those who are in town with children in tow. That said, the dinosaurs in the Senckenberg Museum of Natural History may hold a great appeal to younger visitors also. Did you know that the German National Library is in Frankfurt, too? Alongside its vast collection of books it also hosts a permanent exhibition that may capture your interest. The city’s beautiful Old Opera House with its historic exterior and modern interior is well worth a visit also.

Overall, there is much to see and do, all only a short “U-Bahn” (underground) ride from the book fair should you have the time and energy to explore. If you do, you will find that the airport, the banking district with the Frankfurt stock exchange and the European Central Bank, and the book fair are just parts that make up the city of Frankfurt am Main.

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]]>http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/211287736/_/oupblogmedia/feed/1Frankfurt Town Centre,*Featured,conference,German National Library,book fair,European Central Bank,Media,Books,Frankfurt Book Fair,Frankfurt,Frankfurt stock exchange,Anne Frank,tour guides,tourist sites in Frankfurt,Literature,libraries,Library,Old Opera HouseThe world’s biggest book fair is opening its doors soon and, as a native “Frankfurter” working in the publishing industry, it's the time of year that my colleagues start asking me about my hometown. Sadly, the most common thing I hear is that there is little that they know beyond Frankfurt airport and the exhibition centre.
So for those who return to Frankfurt book fair year after year, I hope to inspire you get out and explore my beautiful native city!
Frankfurt city centre – viewpoints and museums:
The first and most obvious sight when heading into Frankfurt is the city’s skyline, and many heads turn towards the skyscrapers when arriving. Why not take a ride up to the Main Tower viewing platform or its restaurant for a bird’s eye view? Picturesque sights of the city can also be enjoyed from Eiserner Steg. This bridge close to the “Römer,” the town square, leads across the River Main and is at one end of Frankfurt’s museum embankment. This is home to the famous Städel, a prominent fine art museum, the German Film Museum, and the German Architecture Museum, as well as other renowned museums.
On the opposite side of the river, right by the“Römer,” is Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. This hosts visiting art exhibitions and right next to it you’ll find the historic “Dom,” Frankfurt’s cathedral, which is well worth a visit, too.
An oasis in the city – “Palmengarten” and “Holzhausenschlösschen”:
If you're looking for a breath of fresh air, you may prefer to head north-west of the city centre, where the “Palmengarten” (literally “palm garden”) lies, with its fascinating big greenhouses, beautiful water–lily pond, and lush vast grounds. You can spend hours there or simply enjoy a coffee in its lovely on-site café. Also quite central, slightly north of the centre, is the charming and historic “Holzhausenschlösschen,” a pretty baroque style water-moat castle. Both “Palmengarten” and “Holzhausenschlösschen,” offer an extensive cultural programme in the form of concerts, exhibitions and readings in their appealing settings. Frankfurt Town Centre. Image credit: Frankfurt Town Centre. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.
Another way of finding some peace and quiet could be to simply take a stroll along the River Main. The centrally accessible riverside allows you to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city and find a more serene spot with a great view across the water to the skyline beyond. Alternatively, Frankfurt has many cafés, “Konditors” (the German equivalent of a “Patisserie”), ice cream parlours and bakeries, dotted around the central area where coffee and cake or ice cream sundaes can be consumed. You may want to try a piece of “Frankfurter Kranz,” a sponge-type cake much loved by the locals. If you want to browse book titles, head into one of the small independent book shops or into the more commercial “Hugendubel” in the main shopping area.
Literary and cultural Frankfurt:
If a more literary exploration of Frankfurt appeals, (fitting for a visitor to the book fair), head to Goethe House, the famous author’s birthplace, in the first instance. Other renowned authors whose roots that can be tracked to Frankfurt include Anne Frank, whose memory is honoured in her birthplace by marked places of remembrance, including the educational centre Anne Frank, and Heinrich Hoffmann. The latter’s most famous character is paid homage to in the Struwelpeter Museum, worth a visit for those who are in town with children in tow. That said, the dinosaurs in the Senckenberg Museum of Natural History may hold a great appeal to younger visitors also. Did you know that the ... The world’s biggest book fair is opening its doors soon and, as a native “Frankfurter” working in the publishing industry, it's the time of year that my colleagues start asking me about my hometown.http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/211287736/_/oupblogmedia/http://blog.oup.com/2016/10/print-reading-online/Will print die?: When the inevitable isn’thttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OUPblogMedia/~3/R-LLPt0f2LY/
http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/210867608/_/oupblogmedia/#commentsThu, 13 Oct 2016 12:30:04 +0000http://blog.oup.com/?p=122548Mark Twain is reputed to have quipped, “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” Such hyperbole aptly applies to predictions that digital reading will soon triumph over print.
In late 2012, Ben Horowitz (co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz Venture Capital) declared, “Babies born today will probably never read anything in print.” Now four years on, the plausibility of his forecast has already faded.

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Mark Twain is reputed to have quipped, “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” Such hyperbole aptly applies to predictions that digital reading will soon triumph over print.

In late 2012, Ben Horowitz (co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz Venture Capital) declared, “Babies born today will probably never read anything in print.” Now four years on, the plausibility of his forecast has already faded.

It’s understandable why Horowitz spoke so boldly in 2012. Since the 1980s, a growing number of us have been reading on digital screens, and an initial round of eReaders such as Sony’s Librié and Gemstar’s Rocket eBook Reader captured the fancy of some early adopters in the late 1990s and early 2000s. But late 2007 marked a watershed.

The coming of the Amazon Kindle – with inexpensive eBooks to read on it – launched a sales tsunami that shook up the publishing world. During the next five years, triple-digit growth for electronic books was to become the new normal, driven both by the enticement of novelty and a cluster of mega-sellers such as Fifty Shades of Grey, Hunger Games, and Divergent. Figures for print paled in comparison.

But then the wave crested. For the first half of 2013, sales of children’s and young adult eBooks plunged 46% from the previous year-to-date. The Association of American Publishers reported that by year’s end, overall eBook sales for 2013 had risen only 3.8%.

A bevy of factors have contributed to the growth of eReading. Digital books are convenient to carry around, and they generally cost less than their print cousins. With massive increases in online education, it’s not surprising that most course materials assigned for these classes are electronic. It’s also hip to be reading eBooks.

One group that cares intensely about convenience, saving money, and moving with the “in” crowd is young adults. Are they die-hard fans of e Reading? I decided to ask.

Between 2013 and 2015, I surveyed 429 university students from five countries (the US, Japan, Germany, Slovakia, and India) about their reading patterns and preferences regarding print versus digital screens. The results surprised me. Those same students who might be texting or buying shoes online while faculty are lecturing had much praise for old-fashioned print. A whooping 92 % said they concentrated best when reading in print, and 87% judged that if cost were the same as for digital, they would prefer using print for their school work. (Four out of five expressed the same choice for print when it came to pleasure reading.)

What about younger readers? The publisher Scholastic conducts bi-annual surveys of kids ages 6-17. In their most recent iteration (data collected in Fall 2014), Scholastic found that 71% of 12-14 year-olds agreed with the statement “I’ll always want to read books printed on paper even though there are eBooks available.” This number compares with only 54% who agreed in the 2012 survey.

It’s easy to be fooled into thinking that young readers strongly gravitate to digital reading, given all the time they spend on social media or playing Pokémon GO. However, as the mother of a 9 year-old in the Scholastic study commented, “I assumed my daughter would like eBooks better because she is always on her tablet, but she still prefers print.”

Reports from publishers are confirming these user patterns. eBook sales are dipping in both the US and the UK. For those in the academic world, another preference indicator is what university faculty say about their research practices. A recent survey reported that when faculty wanted to read a scholarly monograph cover to cover, almost 80% indicated it was easier to do so with print. About two-thirds expressed the same preference when reading a section of a book in depth.

According to the old adage, “It ain’t over till the fat lady sings.” While the phrase may have originally referenced opera, it works well in thinking about the future of the written word. In 2006, no one could have foreseen the astounding development of eReaders and eBooks. (Fifty years earlier, no one anticipated personal computers or Google.) These days, there is much talk about a “both-and” world: some digital reading, some print. A growing number of publishers and distributors are bundling eBooks together with print, at only a small additional cost.

The printed word has been with us in the West for more than 500 years. These days, it’s not the only successful technology for digesting – or producing – text. To wit: Barack Obama’s reading habits. A recent piece in the New York Times described the solitary hours he spends working after dinner. Obama reads briefing papers in hard copy but skims newspapers on his iPad. (He does an incredible amount of writing in longhand, but I’ll bet he also knows how to type.)

So far at least, the jury remains out on the future mix of print and digital media. My bet is that for some time to come, readers will have the chance to follow their own preferences.

Related Stories

]]>http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/210867608/_/oupblogmedia/feed/1*Featured,Linguistics,Sociology,iPad,Technology,Words Onscreen,baron,digital,Arts & Humanities,Media,ereader,Books,Barack Obama,Education,print,Naomi S. Baron,Fate of Reading in a Digital World,ebook,publishing,kindleMark Twain is reputed to have quipped, “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” Such hyperbole aptly applies to predictions that digital reading will soon triumph over print.
In late 2012, Ben Horowitz (co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz Venture Capital) declared, “Babies born today will probably never read anything in print.” Now four years on, the plausibility of his forecast has already faded.
It’s understandable why Horowitz spoke so boldly in 2012. Since the 1980s, a growing number of us have been reading on digital screens, and an initial round of eReaders such as Sony’s Librié and Gemstar’s Rocket eBook Reader captured the fancy of some early adopters in the late 1990s and early 2000s. But late 2007 marked a watershed.
The coming of the Amazon Kindle – with inexpensive eBooks to read on it – launched a sales tsunami that shook up the publishing world. During the next five years, triple-digit growth for electronic books was to become the new normal, driven both by the enticement of novelty and a cluster of mega-sellers such as Fifty Shades of Grey, Hunger Games, and Divergent. Figures for print paled in comparison.
But then the wave crested. For the first half of 2013, sales of children’s and young adult eBooks plunged 46% from the previous year-to-date. The Association of American Publishers reported that by year’s end, overall eBook sales for 2013 had risen only 3.8%.
A bevy of factors have contributed to the growth of eReading. Digital books are convenient to carry around, and they generally cost less than their print cousins. With massive increases in online education, it’s not surprising that most course materials assigned for these classes are electronic. It’s also hip to be reading eBooks.
One group that cares intensely about convenience, saving money, and moving with the “in” crowd is young adults. Are they die-hard fans of e Reading? I decided to ask.
Between 2013 and 2015, I surveyed 429 university students from five countries (the US, Japan, Germany, Slovakia, and India) about their reading patterns and preferences regarding print versus digital screens. The results surprised me. Those same students who might be texting or buying shoes online while faculty are lecturing had much praise for old-fashioned print. A whooping 92 % said they concentrated best when reading in print, and 87% judged that if cost were the same as for digital, they would prefer using print for their school work. (Four out of five expressed the same choice for print when it came to pleasure reading.) “Kindle” by John Blyberg. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr
What about younger readers? The publisher Scholastic conducts bi-annual surveys of kids ages 6-17. In their most recent iteration (data collected in Fall 2014), Scholastic found that 71% of 12-14 year-olds agreed with the statement “I’ll always want to read books printed on paper even though there are eBooks available.” This number compares with only 54% who agreed in the 2012 survey.
It’s easy to be fooled into thinking that young readers strongly gravitate to digital reading, given all the time they spend on social media or playing Pokémon GO. However, as the mother of a 9 year-old in the Scholastic study commented, “I assumed my daughter would like eBooks better because she is always on her tablet, but she still prefers print.”
Reports from publishers are confirming these user patterns. eBook sales are dipping in both the US and the UK. For those in the academic world, another preference indicator is what university faculty say about their research practices. A recent survey reported that when faculty wanted to read a scholarly monograph cover to cover, almost 80% indicated it was easier to do so with print. About two-thirds expressed the same preference when reading a section of a book in ... Mark Twain is reputed to have quipped, “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” Such hyperbole aptly applies to predictions that digital reading will soon triumph over print.
In late 2012, Ben Horowitz (co-founder of ... http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/210867608/_/oupblogmedia/http://blog.oup.com/2016/09/book-cover-design/Five questions for Oxford World’s Classics cover designer Alex Walkerhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OUPblogMedia/~3/PsCSGAp2NBs/
http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/203044714/_/oupblogmedia/#respondMon, 26 Sep 2016 09:30:44 +0000http://blog.oup.com/?p=124123Judging a book by its cover has turned out to be a necessity in life. We've all perused book shops and been seduced by a particularly intriguing cover--perhaps we have even been convinced to buy a book because of its cover. And, truly, there is no shame in that. It takes skill and artistry to craft a successful book cover, and that should be acknowledged.

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Judging a book by its cover has turned out to be a necessity in life. We’ve all perused book shops and been seduced by a particularly intriguing cover–perhaps we have even been convinced to buy a book because of its cover. And, truly, there is no shame in that. It takes skill and artistry to craft a successful book cover, and that should be acknowledged. We sat down with one of Oxford University Press’ designers, Alex Walker, and asked him about the process that we often take for granted–or even deride in an idiom.

Where do you get your ideas for the images you use on the covers?

The design team considers a broad array of possible images, including paintings, photographs, and artwork: everything from intricate close-up photographs of period jewelry to patterns and fabric supplied by the V&A. When designing covers for books by prolific authors such as H.G. Wells and Jane Austen, we also try to link all titles by the same author together visually, so we draw inspiration from past books in the series. On the flip side, we also look at other books in the same area, previous titles, and competing titles, so that we can be sure to set each book apart from what has come before.

Can you take us through the process of designing a cover for a book in the Oxford World’s Classics (OWC) series?

Sure—to understand this process as easily as possible, imagine a pyramid. Our ethos, which is to make each design the best it can be, is the gravity that will hold our pyramid to the ground. With that in mind, let’s get some building blocks and lay out the first row in our pyramid by compiling as many possible cover images as we can think of. Working with editorial and picture research teams, we propose ways to represent the book in a single image; at this stage, there is no such thing as too many options.

To move onto the second row of our pyramid, we need to begin to narrow down our choices. Our designers will compile all the relevant visuals into a single document that can be presented to multiple teams for review: editorial, production, and marketing all get a chance to express their opinions. There can never be too much feedback as we work together to reach a unified resolution. After initial thoughts and suggestions, any changes will be made or other avenues will be explored. Sometimes a certain design will already be favoured, e.g. artistic over photographic, so the photographic options will fall away as more artistic images get introduced to the fold and we investigate the initial idea further. As the pyramid grows, each row is shorter: possible designs fall away, leaving only our best options.

When we get down to a handful of visuals, anywhere between five and seven, we begin to play with the images a bit more, doing colour correction, making minor edits, and experimenting with interesting crops and layouts. At this stage, we might return to our colleagues in other departments for more feedback, to see what the group’s favourite is. Eventually, a single visual will be selected and we’ll have our cover, the triumphant capstone upon our pyramid.

The OWC covers are often relatively straightforward to design. There is usually a wealth of visual material to consider over the brainstorming process, so if there’s a problem, it’s usually that we have too many ideas, not too few. We might also encounter obstacles to using some images: some will fall outside of our budget, some will take too long to arrive from the supplier in time for our schedules, and others look great on their own but don’t work well when on a front cover.

Do you have a favourite OWC cover that you’ve worked on?

War of the Worlds for the upcoming series of H. G. Wells titles is a personal favourite of mine. The picture research was really striking, and it was difficult selecting a favourite.

How did you become a book jacket designer? Do you have any for aspiring designers?

I chose to focus on design a lot at school so I have an A-level in Graphic Design and a degree in Illustration, and I chose to top that off with an MA in Publishing as well, so naturally I was drawn to book cover design. I would say a command of the software, a well of ideas and originality, and a platform to display these is worth a lot more though. To help myself get experience I would redesign my favourite book covers for my portfolio—I’m currently working on redesigns for the recently announced Man Booker Prize shortlist.

]]>http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/203044714/_/oupblogmedia/feed/0*Featured,Oxford World's Classics,cover design,oxford world's classics,Life at Oxford,Media,Books,book jacket design,jacket design,graphic design,OWC,War of the Worlds,design,covers,Book Covers,book jacketJudging a book by its cover has turned out to be a necessity in life. We've all perused book shops and been seduced by a particularly intriguing cover–perhaps we have even been convinced to buy a book because of its cover. And, truly, there is no shame in that. It takes skill and artistry to craft a successful book cover, and that should be acknowledged. We sat down with one of Oxford University Press' designers, Alex Walker, and asked him about the process that we often take for granted–or even deride in an idiom.
Where do you get your ideas for the images you use on the covers?
The design team considers a broad array of possible images, including paintings, photographs, and artwork: everything from intricate close-up photographs of period jewelry to patterns and fabric supplied by the V&A. When designing covers for books by prolific authors such as H.G. Wells and Jane Austen, we also try to link all titles by the same author together visually, so we draw inspiration from past books in the series. On the flip side, we also look at other books in the same area, previous titles, and competing titles, so that we can be sure to set each book apart from what has come before.
Can you take us through the process of designing a cover for a book in the Oxford World’s Classics (OWC) series?
Sure—to understand this process as easily as possible, imagine a pyramid. Our ethos, which is to make each design the best it can be, is the gravity that will hold our pyramid to the ground. With that in mind, let’s get some building blocks and lay out the first row in our pyramid by compiling as many possible cover images as we can think of. Working with editorial and picture research teams, we propose ways to represent the book in a single image; at this stage, there is no such thing as too many options.
To move onto the second row of our pyramid, we need to begin to narrow down our choices. Our designers will compile all the relevant visuals into a single document that can be presented to multiple teams for review: editorial, production, and marketing all get a chance to express their opinions. There can never be too much feedback as we work together to reach a unified resolution. After initial thoughts and suggestions, any changes will be made or other avenues will be explored. Sometimes a certain design will already be favoured, e.g. artistic over photographic, so the photographic options will fall away as more artistic images get introduced to the fold and we investigate the initial idea further. As the pyramid grows, each row is shorter: possible designs fall away, leaving only our best options.
When we get down to a handful of visuals, anywhere between five and seven, we begin to play with the images a bit more, doing colour correction, making minor edits, and experimenting with interesting crops and layouts. At this stage, we might return to our colleagues in other departments for more feedback, to see what the group’s favourite is. Eventually, a single visual will be selected and we’ll have our cover, the triumphant capstone upon our pyramid. The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
Is it hard to design OWC covers? What difficulties do you encounter?
The OWC covers are often relatively straightforward to design. There is usually a wealth of visual material to consider over the brainstorming process, so if there’s a problem, it’s usually that we have too many ideas, not too few. We might also encounter obstacles to using some images: some will fall outside of our budget, some will take too long to arrive from the supplier in time for our schedules, and others look great on their own but don’t work well when on a front cover.
Do you have a favourite OWC cover that you’ve worked on?
War of the Worlds for the upcoming series of H. G. Wells titles is a personal favourite of mine. The picture research was really striking, and it was ... Judging a book by its cover has turned out to be a necessity in life. We've all perused book shops and been seduced by a particularly intriguing cover–perhaps we have even been convinced to buy a book because of its cover.http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/203044714/_/oupblogmedia/http://blog.oup.com/2016/09/why-peer-review-is-so-important/Why peer review is so importanthttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OUPblogMedia/~3/nMA4WJzvQEo/
http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/201475088/_/oupblogmedia/#respondFri, 23 Sep 2016 08:30:43 +0000http://blog.oup.com/?p=123916As part of Peer Review Week, running from 19-25 September 2016, we are celebrating the essential role that peer review plays in maintaining scientific quality. We asked some of our journal’s editorial teams to tell us why peer review is so important to them and their journals.

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As part of Peer Review Week 2016, running from 19-25 September 2016, we are celebrating the essential role that peer review plays in maintaining scientific quality. We asked some of our journal’s editorial teams to tell us why peer review is so important to them and their journals. Why do you think peer review is so important? Comment at the end of the article and share your thoughts.

* * * * *

“Around 90% of microbiologists see peer review as improving scientific knowledge and as a contribution to the scientific community.”

“I regard it as a duty and privilege to be asked to be a peer reviewer of my fellow scientists’ work so consider it essential to clearly indicate any major concerns I may have then follow this with a list of minor points to help the author improve the paper so that the end result is a concise clear and credible piece of work which adds to the existing body of knowledge.”

“As a researcher I have come to expect the sometimes harsh feedback that peer review entails. However, as an associate editor, my appreciation for scientific critique has evolved. To create a well-crafted commentary on a submitted manuscript is a true skill, and when done well, satisfying to read. Obtaining high quality peer review is core to research publication: journals rely upon the dedication of the academic community.”

—Dr James Galloway is a clinical lecturer at King’s College London, an honorary consultant in rheumatology at King’s College Hospital and an Associate Editor of Rheumatology.

* * * * *

“Peer reviews that are conducted by timely, reliable individuals are indispensable for an editor to judge whether a manuscript submitted is worthwhile to publish in a journal or not.”

—Dr Katsumi Isono is Prof.-emeritus of Kobe University and the Executive Editor of DNA Research.

* * * * *

“The role of academic journals as I see it is to bring the most important discoveries to the attention of other researchers and interested readers, and to frame these advances in an appropriate scientific, clinical, cultural or historical context. Inevitably, in order to select among competing claims for attention, we have to take into account the opinions of experts who may be closer to the actual topic of the submitted work. In my opinion, anonymous peer review is the worst way of evaluating the importance, novelty and veracity of manuscripts, apart from every other method that has been tried. The role of reviewers, however, is not to dictate but to advise, and with relatively rare exceptions, I think they do a good job. I will therefore continue to rely on this system for the journal that I edit.”

—Professor Dimitri M. Kullmann is a Consultant Neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, a Professor of Neurology at the UCL Institute of Neurology, and the Editor of Brain.

* * * * *

“Peer review underpins the academic publication process, but has been much criticised. It is one of the main methods by which journals try to maintain quality control over the material that is published… Journals such as Oxford Medical Case Reports (OMCR) are dependent on our peer reviewers and are grateful to them of the time that they give up.”

—Dr Richard Watts is the Editor-in-Chief Oxford Medical Case Reports, as well as a Consultant Rheumatologist at Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust and Senior Lecturer at the University of East Anglia.

* * * * *

“Peer review is one of the most critical means by which journal editors safeguard the integrity of the scientific literature. Calling attention to details as seemingly minor as misplaced punctuation to those as grave as plagiarism and data fabrication, careful peer reviewers improve manuscripts in countless ways. The editors of Nutrition Reviews encourage all reviewers to approach the task of reviewing with as much care as they would hope a reviewer of their own work would provide. Feedback that is substantive, constructive, polite, and well considered is essential for the process to work effectively and is deeply appreciated.”

]]>http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/201475088/_/oupblogmedia/feed/0Allison Worden,*Featured,Science & Medicine,James Galloway,Journals,journals,Richard Watts,Earth & Life Sciences,Psychology & Neuroscience,oxford journals,Health & Medicine,Media,brain a journal of neurology,Rheumatology,Dimitri M. Kullmann,Catherine Cotton,DNA research,Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy,Katsumi Isono,Nutrition Reviews,Oxford Medical Case Reports,FEMS journals,peer review week 2016,peer review,peer review week,reviewingAs part of Peer Review Week 2016, running from 19-25 September 2016, we are celebrating the essential role that peer review plays in maintaining scientific quality. We asked some of our journal’s editorial teams to tell us why peer review is so important to them and their journals. Why do you think peer review is so important? Comment at the end of the article and share your thoughts.
* * * *
“Around 90% of microbiologists see peer review as improving scientific knowledge and as a contribution to the scientific community.”
—Dr Catherine Cotton is the CEO Federation of European Microbiological Societies (FEMS) on whose behalf Oxford University Press publish five journals.
* * * *
“I regard it as a duty and privilege to be asked to be a peer reviewer of my fellow scientists’ work so consider it essential to clearly indicate any major concerns I may have then follow this with a list of minor points to help the author improve the paper so that the end result is a concise clear and credible piece of work which adds to the existing body of knowledge.”
—Dr J Peter Donnelly is the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy and works for the Radboud University Medical Centre in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
* * * *
“As a researcher I have come to expect the sometimes harsh feedback that peer review entails. However, as an associate editor, my appreciation for scientific critique has evolved. To create a well-crafted commentary on a submitted manuscript is a true skill, and when done well, satisfying to read. Obtaining high quality peer review is core to research publication: journals rely upon the dedication of the academic community.”
—Dr James Galloway is a clinical lecturer at King's College London, an honorary consultant in rheumatology at King's College Hospital and an Associate Editor of Rheumatology.
* * * *
“Peer reviews that are conducted by timely, reliable individuals are indispensable for an editor to judge whether a manuscript submitted is worthwhile to publish in a journal or not.”
—Dr Katsumi Isono is Prof.-emeritus of Kobe University and the Executive Editor of DNA Research.
* * * *
“The role of academic journals as I see it is to bring the most important discoveries to the attention of other researchers and interested readers, and to frame these advances in an appropriate scientific, clinical, cultural or historical context. Inevitably, in order to select among competing claims for attention, we have to take into account the opinions of experts who may be closer to the actual topic of the submitted work. In my opinion, anonymous peer review is the worst way of evaluating the importance, novelty and veracity of manuscripts, apart from every other method that has been tried. The role of reviewers, however, is not to dictate but to advise, and with relatively rare exceptions, I think they do a good job. I will therefore continue to rely on this system for the journal that I edit.”
—Professor Dimitri M. Kullmann is a Consultant Neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, a Professor of Neurology at the UCL Institute of Neurology, and the Editor of Brain.
* * * *
“Peer review underpins the academic publication process, but has been much criticised. It is one of the main methods by which journals try to maintain quality control over the material that is published… Journals such as Oxford Medical Case Reports (OMCR) are dependent on our peer reviewers and are grateful to them of the time that they give up.”
—Dr Richard Watts is the Editor-in-Chief Oxford Medical Case Reports, as well as a Consultant Rheumatologist at ... As part of Peer Review Week 2016, running from 19-25 September 2016, we are celebrating the essential role that peer review plays in maintaining scientific quality. We asked some of our journal’s editorial teams to tell us why peer ... http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/201475088/_/oupblogmedia/http://blog.oup.com/2016/09/moral-experts/In defence of moral expertshttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OUPblogMedia/~3/V3Z8fauocFg/
http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/200516194/_/oupblogmedia/#commentsWed, 21 Sep 2016 12:30:17 +0000http://blog.oup.com/?p=122414I’m no expert. Still, I reckon the notorious claim made by Michael Gove, a leading campaigner for Britain to leave the European Union, that the nation had had enough of experts, will dog him for the rest of his career. In fact, he wasn’t alone. Other Brexit leaders also sneered at the pretensions of experts, the majority of whom warned about the risks – political, economic, social - of a Britain outside the EU.

]]>
I’m no expert. Still, I reckon the notorious claim made by Michael Gove, a leading campaigner for Britain to leave the European Union, that the nation had had enough of experts, will dog him for the rest of his career. In fact, he wasn’t alone. Other Brexit leaders also sneered at the pretensions of experts, the majority of whom warned about the risks – political, economic, social – of a Britain outside the EU.

Those who dismiss experts have a habit of using the prefix “so-called”. Time will tell (probably not much time) whether Gove was right to dismiss the anxieties of “so-called experts”. Still, despite the beating he received in sections of the press, his was on politically safe ground. There is a suspicion of experts in Britain, part of a more general suspicion of elites and of the establishment.

The world of philosophy suffers from a similar malaise. There are few philosophers who can claim to be public intellectuals, at least in the Anglo-American world. As we know, the French are willing to embrace and celebrate their philosophers in a way that the British find uncomfortable. We have one or two philosophers with the flowing locks of Bernard-Henri Lévy but none with his profile or standing. It’s not just that the British public has a strain of anti-intellectualism, and a weaker appetite than the French for philosophical input to the national debate. It’s also that the few philosophers who do attempt to contribute to the world beyond the Academy risk ridicule within the profession. No doubt this is driven in part by an unworthy, if natural, envy. “They’re not serious” is the sotto voce (and sometime not so sotto voce) verdict of colleagues who appear in print or on TV or radio.

Within my sub-genre of philosophy – practical ethics – the suspicion of public engagement has a more specific cause. It’s often asserted that moral philosophers can’t claim expertize in ethics in the same way a chemist, for example, can be an expert on a molecule.

That’s a concern that puzzles me. Certainly there’s some evidence – from the UC Riverside philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel – that those who write about and teach courses in ethics are no more ethical than anybody else. And it’s true that specializing and so commanding authority in trichloro-2-methyl-2-propanol is disanalogous in various ways to being an authority in some corner of practical ethics – not least in how this expertize can be tested.

Michael Gove at Policy Exchange delivering his keynote speech ‘The Importance of Teaching’. Perhaps he should follow his own expert advice and learn from the experts. Image CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Still, I want to defend the expertize of moral philosophers, to maintain that their views in their chosen field merit respect and at least a degree of deference. We should heed attention because they have mastered the relevant information on their topic and brought to bear the philosopher’s chief tools, depth and clarity of thought. They have marshalled arguments and ironed out inconsistencies. And practical ethics is tough. To take just one example – trying to work through the metaphysics of what gives human beings moral status, and the implications of this for a variety of non-standard cases, is hugely complex. I endorse what the White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford, Jeff McMahan, says: “Questions about abortion and termination of life support, and euthanasia, and so on, are really very difficult. We are right to be puzzled about these issues, and people who think that they know the answers and have very strong views about these matters, without having addressed these issues in metaphysics and moral theory are making a mistake. They should be much more sceptical about their own beliefs.”

Sometimes the philosopher’s arguments about an issue merely shores up common-sense. But the role of the philosopher cannot merely be to describe the standard position. That would reduce philosophy to a branch of psychology, or anthropology, or sociology. The moral philosopher does not just ask how much people give to charity, or want to give to charity, relevant though these questions are, but how much should they give to charity. But whether it be John Stuart Mill on women’s rights, or Peter Singer on animal rights, philosophical reasoning can produce results that the then majority find objectionable, even repugnant. My appeal is that in such cases we should pay close attention to the philosophy, to how conclusions are reached. Our prima facie position should be that the philosopher has a good case.

There is some evidence that in their quiet way, British philosophers are beginning to assert themselves. I was delighted to see that in a recent week of five BBC essays devoted to post-Brexit Britain – three of the authors, John Gray, Onora O’Neill and Roger Scruton – were philosophers. In the book I’ve just edited, Philosophers Take On the World, over forty philosophers address stories in the news and argue for often counter-intuitive positions. Counter-intuitive perhaps, but my starting position is that we should take ethics experts seriously. Who knows, Mr Gove, they may even be right.

]]>http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/200516194/_/oupblogmedia/feed/3*Featured,Philosophers Take On the World,Philosophy,university of oxford,Arts & Humanities,moral philosophy,Media,Books,ethics,brexit,EU,david edmonds,michael gove,Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics,expert,Practical EthicsI’m no expert. Still, I reckon the notorious claim made by Michael Gove, a leading campaigner for Britain to leave the European Union, that the nation had had enough of experts, will dog him for the rest of his career. In fact, he wasn’t alone. Other Brexit leaders also sneered at the pretensions of experts, the majority of whom warned about the risks – political, economic, social – of a Britain outside the EU.
Those who dismiss experts have a habit of using the prefix “so-called”. Time will tell (probably not much time) whether Gove was right to dismiss the anxieties of “so-called experts”. Still, despite the beating he received in sections of the press, his was on politically safe ground. There is a suspicion of experts in Britain, part of a more general suspicion of elites and of the establishment.
The world of philosophy suffers from a similar malaise. There are few philosophers who can claim to be public intellectuals, at least in the Anglo-American world. As we know, the French are willing to embrace and celebrate their philosophers in a way that the British find uncomfortable. We have one or two philosophers with the flowing locks of Bernard-Henri Lévy but none with his profile or standing. It’s not just that the British public has a strain of anti-intellectualism, and a weaker appetite than the French for philosophical input to the national debate. It’s also that the few philosophers who do attempt to contribute to the world beyond the Academy risk ridicule within the profession. No doubt this is driven in part by an unworthy, if natural, envy. “They’re not serious” is the sotto voce (and sometime not so sotto voce) verdict of colleagues who appear in print or on TV or radio.
Within my sub-genre of philosophy – practical ethics – the suspicion of public engagement has a more specific cause. It’s often asserted that moral philosophers can’t claim expertize in ethics in the same way a chemist, for example, can be an expert on a molecule.
That’s a concern that puzzles me. Certainly there’s some evidence – from the UC Riverside philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel – that those who write about and teach courses in ethics are no more ethical than anybody else. And it’s true that specializing and so commanding authority in trichloro-2-methyl-2-propanol is disanalogous in various ways to being an authority in some corner of practical ethics – not least in how this expertize can be tested. Michael Gove at Policy Exchange delivering his keynote speech 'The Importance of Teaching'. Perhaps he should follow his own expert advice and learn from the experts. Image CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Still, I want to defend the expertize of moral philosophers, to maintain that their views in their chosen field merit respect and at least a degree of deference. We should heed attention because they have mastered the relevant information on their topic and brought to bear the philosopher’s chief tools, depth and clarity of thought. They have marshalled arguments and ironed out inconsistencies. And practical ethics is tough. To take just one example – trying to work through the metaphysics of what gives human beings moral status, and the implications of this for a variety of non-standard cases, is hugely complex. I endorse what the White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford, Jeff McMahan, says: Questions about abortion and termination of life support, and euthanasia, and so on, are really very difficult. We are right to be puzzled about these issues, and people who think that they know the answers and have very strong views about these matters, without having addressed these issues in metaphysics and moral theory are making a mistake. They should be much more sceptical about their own ... I’m no expert. Still, I reckon the notorious claim made by Michael Gove, a leading campaigner for Britain to leave the European Union, that the nation had had enough of experts, will dog him for the rest of his career.http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/200516194/_/oupblogmedia/http://blog.oup.com/2016/08/five-crimes-pokemon-go-law/Five crimes being committed by Pokémon Go playershttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OUPblogMedia/~3/tH22wwlRX5o/
http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/184202248/_/oupblogmedia/#commentsTue, 23 Aug 2016 07:30:37 +0000http://blog.oup.com/?p=122852Record-breaking mobile app Pokémon Go has been downloaded over 75 million times worldwide, a number set only to increase as the game is released in more territories. What five common crimes have police officers had to attend to as a result of this craze taking off?

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The record-breaking mobile app Pokémon Go has been downloaded over 75 million times worldwide, a number set only to increase as the game is released in more territories.

For anyone still in the dark, Pokémon Go is a virtual reality game which uses GPS to create a map on the player’s mobile phone screen, placing images of Pokémon seemingly in the real world. It has been a huge commercial success – but the game that everyone’s talking about hasn’t come without its problems.

What five common crimes have police officers had to attend to as a result of this craze taking off?

Theft

The most commonly reported Pokémon Go related crime seems to be theft. There have been multiple incidences of players having their phones snatched out of their hands while not paying attention to their surroundings, as well as cases of criminals setting lures to draw unsuspecting victims to secluded areas to rob them.

Trespassing

Players have been warned to be careful about entering private property without permission. Whether wandering onto the property by accident due to being absorbed in the game, or by deliberately seeking out Pokémon, some players have been causing a nuisance to property owners.

Harassment

Similarly, instances of people calling the police due to feeling threatened or being caused significant distress as a result of Pokémon placed on or nearby their property could result in harassment charges being brought to players. In one reported case, “at least five individuals knocked on plaintiff’s door, informed plaintiff that there was a Pokémon in his backyard, and asked for access to plaintiff’s backyard in order to ‘catch’ the Pokémon.”

The potential for road-related incidents while playing Pokémon Go are numerous, not least with pedestrians stepping into the road without looking whilst being more concerned with their phone screen. While mobile phones causing road traffic accidents is perhaps nothing new, there have also been reports of a multi-car pileup caused by a Pokémon Go playing driver, as well as one distracted user crashing into a police car.

Data Protection

In the process of downloading the app and in order for the game to work, users are providing detailed information about their location, along with other personal data. Although there have been no reported cases, Pokémon Go players run the risk of losing that data to hackers, potentially falling victim to credit card fraud or identity theft.

There are undoubtedly other ways that Pokémon Go players will fall victim to, or commit, crimes while playing the game, as use of the app continues to increase. Although, it’s not all bad news — there are also reports of Pokémon Go players helping to solve crimes too.

]]>http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/184202248/_/oupblogmedia/feed/1police duties,*Featured,Sports & Games,dangerous driving,theft,gaming,Pokemon Go,data protection,Smartphone Apps,Editor's Picks,Blackstones,Media,Books,Blackstone's Policing,trespassing,Law,criminal law,harassment,road policing,crime,police,robbery,UK Books,heather saundersThe record-breaking mobile app Pokémon Go has been downloaded over 75 million times worldwide, a number set only to increase as the game is released in more territories.
For anyone still in the dark, Pokémon Go is a virtual reality game which uses GPS to create a map on the player’s mobile phone screen, placing images of Pokémon seemingly in the real world. It has been a huge commercial success – but the game that everyone’s talking about hasn’t come without its problems.
What five common crimes have police officers had to attend to as a result of this craze taking off?
- Theft
The most commonly reported Pokémon Go related crime seems to be theft. There have been multiple incidences of players having their phones snatched out of their hands while not paying attention to their surroundings, as well as cases of criminals setting lures to draw unsuspecting victims to secluded areas to rob them.
- Trespassing
Players have been warned to be careful about entering private property without permission. Whether wandering onto the property by accident due to being absorbed in the game, or by deliberately seeking out Pokémon, some players have been causing a nuisance to property owners.
- Harassment
Similarly, instances of people calling the police due to feeling threatened or being caused significant distress as a result of Pokémon placed on or nearby their property could result in harassment charges being brought to players. In one reported case, “at least five individuals knocked on plaintiff’s door, informed plaintiff that there was a Pokémon in his backyard, and asked for access to plaintiff’s backyard in order to ‘catch’ the Pokémon.” Image credit: 'pokemon-go-1543556_640,' by natureaddict. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.
- Dangerous driving
The potential for road-related incidents while playing Pokémon Go are numerous, not least with pedestrians stepping into the road without looking whilst being more concerned with their phone screen. While mobile phones causing road traffic accidents is perhaps nothing new, there have also been reports of a multi-car pileup caused by a Pokémon Go playing driver, as well as one distracted user crashing into a police car.
- Data Protection
In the process of downloading the app and in order for the game to work, users are providing detailed information about their location, along with other personal data. Although there have been no reported cases, Pokémon Go players run the risk of losing that data to hackers, potentially falling victim to credit card fraud or identity theft.
There are undoubtedly other ways that Pokémon Go players will fall victim to, or commit, crimes while playing the game, as use of the app continues to increase. Although, it’s not all bad news — there are also reports of Pokémon Go players helping to solve crimes too.
Featured image credit: pokemon-go-1569794_1920 by Tumisu. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.
The post Five crimes being committed by Pokémon Go players appeared first on OUPblog. The record-breaking mobile app Pokémon Go has been downloaded over 75 million times worldwide, a number set only to increase as the game is released in more territories.
For anyone still in the dark, Pokémon Go is a virtual reality game ... http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/184202248/_/oupblogmedia/http://blog.oup.com/2016/07/national-marketing-global-techniques/National marketing in a global markethttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OUPblogMedia/~3/ylKT5BHY1Zk/
http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/169239024/_/oupblogmedia/#respondTue, 26 Jul 2016 09:30:26 +0000http://blog.oup.com/?p=121946Marketing as a business function has swept the world. It is the fastest growing global business activity. It has infiltrated all aspects of life, not just the economic - but also the political, social and personal.

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Marketing as a business function has swept the world. It is the fastest growing global business activity. It has infiltrated all aspects of life, not just the economic — but also the political, social, and personal.

During my 30 years of working in international marketing roles, I have witnessed this global rise, and consequently, my preferred approach is to be global with my marketing campaigns. In the digital, interconnected world this is, I believe, a necessity.

But in what sense global?

I have learned that global approaches to marketing campaigns need to be aligned to national culture and practice. Unique cultures often defy global homogeneity and practice. National approaches to marketing and perceptions of marketing persist despite the borderless dynamics of markets, money, and social media.

This ‘nationalism’ in the conduct and perception of marketing can often be linked to the recent history, culture, and social character of a given country, and to the status (high or low) that the discipline of marketing has there.

While most countries are now using similar methods – such as social and digital marketing – there are some enduring differences and perceptions.

Let’s look at marketing characteristics in some of the world’s largest economies:

The US pioneered modern marketing techniques at the beginning of the 20th century. It remains a beacon for innovative marketing practice. Although the majority of its marketing activities are focused on its huge domestic market, the US companies and people have continued both to adopt and adapt new techniques of marketing.

In the US, marketing is treated as a profession rather than a support service. There, marketing enjoys much higher social and professional esteem and is better understood as a central factor in economic development than in most other countries. The marketing of products, services, and individuals is pervasive and ubiquitous at all levels of American economic life.

Marketing accomplishment can be a route to becoming a CEO in many American companies. US presidential candidates make no secret of using marketing techniques to get elected.

The UK has great capability in media, communications, consumer goods marketing and creative advertising. The British have always been weak in industrial product marketing and in commercial market exploitation of Britain’s many innovations. Certain of the functions of marketing – such as creative advertising, journalism, and public relations – are respected in the UK.

Instagram and other Social Media Apps by Jason Howle. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.

Many leading British filmmakers started their careers in creative advertising. The BBC has often held up as the world benchmark of quality in its broadcast communications and increasingly for its digital channels. However, the UK has never ascribed professional status to marketing as a whole. Board level positions in the UK are more filled with accountants than with marketers.

Germany, with its strong engineering roots, has majored in product marketing, particularly in the automotive industry. Enhancing product functionality is preferred to intensive marketing of the product. German consumers are conservative, private, and risk averse and are not easily influenced by advertising, either in traditional, broadcast, or online forms and tend not be early adopters of innovations. Advertising as a percentage of GDP is much lower in Germany than in the US or the UK. Unlike the UK, Germany has not been so open to American style marketing techniques. German journalists and media professionals are critical and rigorous and not easy to persuade.

Consequently, Germany is weaker in services marketing, creative advertising, and in its general appreciation of marketing as a serious business discipline. Marketing does not have the status in German business culture that it has in the US and is not regarded as a route to board level appointments.

In Japan, the customer is venerated. Customer service and putting the customer first is deeply rooted in Japanese business culture. The overwhelming focus of Japanese marketing is on winning the trust of customers and creating long term relationships with them. Japanese customers are fickle and demand highest quality in both service and in products. Their interpretation of product and service quality is the key to winning both their business and their enduring loyalty. Consequently much of Japanese marketing attention is on continuous improvements of product quality and the process of service improvement. As a result, Japan is skilled in consumer market research, and product marketing.

Japanese culture does not accord any distinction to marketing as a profession, and tends to see marketing as an integral part of business, rather than a separate discipline.

Russia and China, always historically strong on the uses of image, staged events, and propaganda within their own countries, are now coming to appreciate the necessity of marketing as they start to become major powers in global markets.

China in particular has developed unique forms of digital and social marketing in a very short time period. Chinese advanced home grown social media – WeChat, Weibo and Youku – have gone beyond Western social media platforms – and with vast Mandarin language user groups, have become a playground for Chinese brands.

Another uniquely Chinese market phenomenon is the demographic consequences of the one child policy, which has meant that a whole generation of under 40’s having the undivided attention of 6 relatives, and whose patterns of higher spending consumer behaviour are totally different from their thriftier parents’ generation. China’s new generation of ‘little emperors’ are changing the way in which companies address marketing for a more consumer dominated society.

India uses a blend of traditional and modern marketing to power its phenomenal growth, often in spectacular cocktail mixes of the old and the new for their vast population. India is a vibrant and raucous market, with vast disparities of wealth and consumer behaviour. India uses many of the marketing techniques that the West would now view as traditional: giant bill board posters, print advertising, product placement in films and television, celebrity endorsement; ‘push’ marketing using texting. In other ways India has some unique features; firstly global brands must adapt to Indian customs and tastes – for example – most famously McDonald’s revision of its successful ‘global’ food menu to align with Indian culture, practice, and taste. Secondly the innovative use of celebrity marketing – notably leading Indian cricketers and Bollywood film stars – to market products and services – often involving elaborate hoaxes and long running stories.

So we have a paradox: an increasing global world, with increasingly standard digital marketing techniques, yet the endurance of local and national cultures that prevent total homogenization of all our products and services and how we see them, experience them, and receive them.

]]>http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/169239024/_/oupblogmedia/feed/0*Featured,advertising,consumer marketing,A Dictionary of Marketing,digital marketing,marketing,Media,global business,social media,Weibo,Books,charles doyle,Japanese culture,Social Sciences,business culture,WeChat,Youku,Business & Economics,global marketing,Economic Development,global marketsMarketing as a business function has swept the world. It is the fastest growing global business activity. It has infiltrated all aspects of life, not just the economic — but also the political, social, and personal.
During my 30 years of working in international marketing roles, I have witnessed this global rise, and consequently, my preferred approach is to be global with my marketing campaigns. In the digital, interconnected world this is, I believe, a necessity.
But in what sense global?
I have learned that global approaches to marketing campaigns need to be aligned to national culture and practice. Unique cultures often defy global homogeneity and practice. National approaches to marketing and perceptions of marketing persist despite the borderless dynamics of markets, money, and social media.
This ‘nationalism’ in the conduct and perception of marketing can often be linked to the recent history, culture, and social character of a given country, and to the status (high or low) that the discipline of marketing has there.
While most countries are now using similar methods – such as social and digital marketing – there are some enduring differences and perceptions.
Let’s look at marketing characteristics in some of the world’s largest economies:
The US pioneered modern marketing techniques at the beginning of the 20th century. It remains a beacon for innovative marketing practice. Although the majority of its marketing activities are focused on its huge domestic market, the US companies and people have continued both to adopt and adapt new techniques of marketing.
In the US, marketing is treated as a profession rather than a support service. There, marketing enjoys much higher social and professional esteem and is better understood as a central factor in economic development than in most other countries. The marketing of products, services, and individuals is pervasive and ubiquitous at all levels of American economic life.
Marketing accomplishment can be a route to becoming a CEO in many American companies. US presidential candidates make no secret of using marketing techniques to get elected.
The UK has great capability in media, communications, consumer goods marketing and creative advertising. The British have always been weak in industrial product marketing and in commercial market exploitation of Britain’s many innovations. Certain of the functions of marketing – such as creative advertising, journalism, and public relations – are respected in the UK. Instagram and other Social Media Apps by Jason Howle. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.
Many leading British filmmakers started their careers in creative advertising. The BBC has often held up as the world benchmark of quality in its broadcast communications and increasingly for its digital channels. However, the UK has never ascribed professional status to marketing as a whole. Board level positions in the UK are more filled with accountants than with marketers.
Germany, with its strong engineering roots, has majored in product marketing, particularly in the automotive industry. Enhancing product functionality is preferred to intensive marketing of the product. German consumers are conservative, private, and risk averse and are not easily influenced by advertising, either in traditional, broadcast, or online forms and tend not be early adopters of innovations. Advertising as a percentage of GDP is much lower in Germany than in the US or the UK. Unlike the UK, Germany has not been so open to American style marketing techniques. German journalists and media professionals are critical and rigorous and not easy to persuade.
Consequently, Germany is weaker in services marketing, creative advertising, and in its general appreciation of marketing as a serious business discipline. Marketing does not have the status in German business culture that it has in the US and is not regarded as a ... Marketing as a business function has swept the world. It is the fastest growing global business activity. It has infiltrated all aspects of life, not just the economic — but also the political, social, and personal.http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/169239024/_/oupblogmedia/http://blog.oup.com/2016/06/uber-in-europe/Uber in Europe: back to the futurehttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OUPblogMedia/~3/HyOx7Dwx7H0/
http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/161098136/_/oupblogmedia/#respondSat, 25 Jun 2016 07:30:15 +0000http://blog.oup.com/?p=121305Where will Uber stop? After the news that the Saudi’s have decided to invest $3.5bn in the company, came details of a further $2bn Uber wants to raise from financial markets using tecniques never deployed before by a start-up.

]]>
Where will Uber stop? After the news that the Saudi’s have decided to invest $3.5bn in the company, came details of a further $2bn Uber wants to raise from financial markets using tecniques never deployed before by a start-up. Uber already has a war-chest of $14bn. to spend in expanding its role in the Middle East, Africa, India and China, as well as to develop new services like driverless cars and car-pooling. But it’s in Europe that the company has encountered the greatest opposition to its presence and its methods, confirming the Old World’s status as the place where America’s tech giants find their toughest official critics and most militant opponents in local business.

Uber’s urge to simply ignore local regulations and apply the same aggressive drive to attract drivers and customers that worked so well in the US has backfired in Europe, as it has in nations as far apart as Indonesia, South Africa and Chile. In June 2016 a French court found that Uber had been guilty of starting an “illegal” car-booking service, of “misleading commercial practices” and “complicity in the illegal exercise of the taxi profession.” Large fines were imposed on the company and its local directors. After German courts banned the basic Uber service, Dieter Schlenker, head of Taxi Deutschland, a trade association, said the judgment “benefits all those who find it hard to defend themselves alone against the interests of big corporations.” (Financial Times, 6 June 2016)

The Uber story is a classic example, from a very long line, of American innovations which disrupted traditional European ways of organising life, government, business, culture and much more. This is the true American soft power challenge: demonstrating the force of an example which is exceptionally big, dynamic and attractive, and so cannot be dodged. Invariably it places Europe’s institutions, economies and peoples up against the conundrum of whether this is progress or not, and how to come to terms with it. Does acceptance imply some degree of “Americanization”? Does rejection mean opting for backwardness and marginalization? If some sort of adaptation is proposed, how to produce the resources of political and business imagination to develop alternatives and apply them?

No society better than America demonstrates that what a soft-power superpower deploys always is a special ability to generate and deploy models of change and innovation, and to identify them as modernity: showing the world, society, the individual, possible ways to advance for the better, however defined. Such models offer what the sociologist Peter Wagner, in his essay on “Modernity,” calls “the interpretative and practical power of (their) normativity and functionality”; in other words – those of his colleague Gerard Delanty – their “normative salience.” The way Uber pushes its ‘normative salience’ is just what long-established taxi firms fear most.

Every traditional idea of modernity, sovereignty and identity in taxis is put in doubt by the Uber challenge. Modernity, because Uber shows how digital applications can revolutionise a traditional transport sector; sovereignty because its app functions world-wide, while most national and local governments have long evolved norms for running taxi services themselves; identity, as taxi drivers have always considered themselves a distinct body of workers in Europe with their own skills and knowledge, even their own particular vehicles in the case of the celebrated London black cab.

Uber’s force and ruthlessness seem exceptional even by the standards of Silicon Valley. “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission,” is one article of faith attributed to the firm. But its drive for constant innovation and ubiquity places it naturally in the long line of American service sector imports into Europe which started controversially with chains of down-market stores in the 1920s and cinema palaces in the 1930s. It then proceeded with coffee bars after World War II, shopping malls from the 1950s on, McDonald’s from the 1970s, Blockbusters in the 1980s, before morphing into the digital world from the 1990s on. Starbucks arrived in the early 2000s. In many nations the activities of chain stores were limited by those who sought to defend the rights and privileges of small shopkeepers (Hitler too played that game), an attitude still to be found in societies like India. As for McDonald’s, the hapless company has found its road blocked in the past, even violently, by activists from Hampstead to France, from Italy to Iceland.

Why the Old World itself has been unable to generate a world-dominating net-based service has generated discussion ever since Google started to loom so large, and has been renewed in the face of Uber. Technical and legal arguments have been taken up and dropped: sheer lack of imagination and ambition gets most of the blame these days. But the investors prepared to pour extraordinary sums in to Uber, and lose them, putting market share world-wide before profit, have no possible rivals anywhere. The head of Google in Europe has blamed the EU for ‘protecting the past from the future’. If so, it is only doing what so many of its citizens, with taxi-drivers head of the queue, would want it to do. But on the 2nd June, the EU made clear it was in favour of ‘the sharing economy’ in whatever form it might take, suggesting only that common guidelines across the ‘single market’ should emerge to help its growth. Given current attitudes in much of Europe to the EU’s eternal harmonising efforts, Brussels may well be wasting its breath.

]]>http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/161098136/_/oupblogmedia/feed/0*Featured,service sector imports,Technology,sharing economy,transport,Uber,David Ellwood,taxis,soft power,the shock of america,Media,Books,superpower,Americanization,EU,America,Old World,europe and the challenge of the century,Business & EconomicsWhere will Uber stop? After the news that the Saudi’s have decided to invest $3.5bn in the company, came details of a further $2bn Uber wants to raise from financial markets using tecniques never deployed before by a start-up. Uber already has a war-chest of $14bn. to spend in expanding its role in the Middle East, Africa, India and China, as well as to develop new services like driverless cars and car-pooling. But it’s in Europe that the company has encountered the greatest opposition to its presence and its methods, confirming the Old World’s status as the place where America’s tech giants find their toughest official critics and most militant opponents in local business.
Uber’s urge to simply ignore local regulations and apply the same aggressive drive to attract drivers and customers that worked so well in the US has backfired in Europe, as it has in nations as far apart as Indonesia, South Africa and Chile. In June 2016 a French court found that Uber had been guilty of starting an “illegal” car-booking service, of “misleading commercial practices” and “complicity in the illegal exercise of the taxi profession.” Large fines were imposed on the company and its local directors. After German courts banned the basic Uber service, Dieter Schlenker, head of Taxi Deutschland, a trade association, said the judgment “benefits all those who find it hard to defend themselves alone against the interests of big corporations.” (Financial Times, 6 June 2016)
The Uber story is a classic example, from a very long line, of American innovations which disrupted traditional European ways of organising life, government, business, culture and much more. This is the true American soft power challenge: demonstrating the force of an example which is exceptionally big, dynamic and attractive, and so cannot be dodged. Invariably it places Europe’s institutions, economies and peoples up against the conundrum of whether this is progress or not, and how to come to terms with it. Does acceptance imply some degree of “Americanization”? Does rejection mean opting for backwardness and marginalization? If some sort of adaptation is proposed, how to produce the resources of political and business imagination to develop alternatives and apply them? Uber app. Photo by freestocks.org. Public domain via Flickr.
No society better than America demonstrates that what a soft-power superpower deploys always is a special ability to generate and deploy models of change and innovation, and to identify them as modernity: showing the world, society, the individual, possible ways to advance for the better, however defined. Such models offer what the sociologist Peter Wagner, in his essay on “Modernity,” calls “the interpretative and practical power of (their) normativity and functionality”; in other words – those of his colleague Gerard Delanty – their “normative salience.” The way Uber pushes its ‘normative salience’ is just what long-established taxi firms fear most.
Every traditional idea of modernity, sovereignty and identity in taxis is put in doubt by the Uber challenge. Modernity, because Uber shows how digital applications can revolutionise a traditional transport sector; sovereignty because its app functions world-wide, while most national and local governments have long evolved norms for running taxi services themselves; identity, as taxi drivers have always considered themselves a distinct body of workers in Europe with their own skills and knowledge, even their own particular vehicles in the case of the celebrated London black cab.
Uber’s force and ruthlessness seem exceptional even by the standards of Silicon Valley. “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission,” is one article of faith attributed to the firm. But its drive for constant innovation and ... Where will Uber stop? After the news that the Saudi’s have decided to invest $3.5bn in the company, came details of a further $2bn Uber wants to raise from financial markets using tecniques never deployed before by a start-up.http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/161098136/_/oupblogmedia/http://blog.oup.com/2016/05/zola-rougon-macquart-series/Émile Zola and the Rougon-Macquarthttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OUPblogMedia/~3/cn0nPe2AQZs/
http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/153440956/_/oupblogmedia/#commentsMon, 09 May 2016 10:30:19 +0000http://blog.oup.com/?p=112076Listen to, and read a transcript of an interview from Nicola Barringer with Valerie Minogue, translator of Money by Émile Zola, part of the Rougon-Macquart cycle. In the interview, she introduces the Rougon-Macquart, Zola's epic cycle of twenty novels.

Listen to, and read a transcript of an interview from Nicola Barranger for Oxford World’s Classics with Valerie Minogue, translator of Money by Émile Zola, part of the Rougon-Macquart cycle. In the interview, she introduces the Rougon-Macquart, Zola’s epic cycle of twenty novels.

Nicola Barranger: Why did Zola write the Rougon-Macquart series?

Valerie Minogue: Zola’s intention really was to do something like Balzac had done in ‘La Comédie humaine’. While Balzac had taken a sort of horizontal view of French society, and given a very broad panorama of that society, whereas Zola wanted to do it – if you like – in vertical terms going from one generation to another. Above all because he was tremendously interested in the effects of heredity, race, environment and moment in time. So you see history playing a large part in it and indeed historical events playing a large part and heredity yes, but you also see that heredity can also produce very different results

NB: There is a huge cast of characters for these twenty novels

VM: Huge, yes

NB: Was it always his intention to write quite so many novels when he started?

VM: I think he started off thinking that he would write about ten, but then the whole thing grew, and grew, and grew so he ended up with twenty novels. The reason why it is Les Rougon-Macquart is that there are two sides of this family. This is very much relevant to the whole question of heredity because you have the Macquart which are the illegitimate side of the family, which are the mostly rather poor, working class and all that. Then you have on the other hand the Rougon, who are the go-getters, the ambitious, mostly middle class even ministerial as in Eugène Rougon. So you have quite a divide really, on the Macquart side you get people like Gervaise in L’Assommoir, the laundress, which is the most wonderful novel, which tells her very sad life. And again her daughter Nana

VM: Yes so, on the other hand the Rougon you have Saccard, Eugène Rougon and Pascal Rougon.

NB: Was there a feeling that the social ills of the period that Zola was writing about, should be studied as much as the scientists would study hereditary disease?

VM: Absolutely, and Zola’s view was that however disgusting or even obscene, you must look at it closely, describe it accurately. It was important as if you were a doctor investigating a disease and the growth of the disease and all the symptoms of the disease. And then if you showed that properly, his view was that if you managed to show this effectively then somebody would do something about it, I mean the government, the people, would create a sort of grand swell if you like, of feeling. And indeed and quite to some extent he succeeded in that.

]]>http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/153440956/_/oupblogmedia/feed/3*Featured,Audio & Podcasts,L'assommior,transcript,Oxford World's Classics,Emilie Zola,France,Arts & Humanities,Media,french literature,interview,rougon-macquart,SoundCloud,Nineteenth Century Literature,money,nana,Literature,MultimediaListen to, and read a transcript of an interview from Nicola Barranger for Oxford World's Classics with Valerie Minogue, translator of Money by Émile Zola, part of the Rougon-Macquart cycle. In the interview, she introduces the Rougon-Macquart, Zola's epic cycle of twenty novels.
Nicola Barranger: Why did Zola write the Rougon-Macquart series?
Valerie Minogue: Zola’s intention really was to do something like Balzac had done in ‘La Comédie humaine’. While Balzac had taken a sort of horizontal view of French society, and given a very broad panorama of that society, whereas Zola wanted to do it – if you like – in vertical terms going from one generation to another. Above all because he was tremendously interested in the effects of heredity, race, environment and moment in time. So you see history playing a large part in it and indeed historical events playing a large part and heredity yes, but you also see that heredity can also produce very different results
NB: There is a huge cast of characters for these twenty novels
VM: Huge, yes
NB: Was it always his intention to write quite so many novels when he started?
VM: I think he started off thinking that he would write about ten, but then the whole thing grew, and grew, and grew so he ended up with twenty novels. The reason why it is Les Rougon-Macquart is that there are two sides of this family. This is very much relevant to the whole question of heredity because you have the Macquart which are the illegitimate side of the family, which are the mostly rather poor, working class and all that. Then you have on the other hand the Rougon, who are the go-getters, the ambitious, mostly middle class even ministerial as in Eugène Rougon. So you have quite a divide really, on the Macquart side you get people like Gervaise in L’Assommoir, the laundress, which is the most wonderful novel, which tells her very sad life. And again her daughter Nana
NB: The very famous novel Nana,
VM: Yes so, on the other hand the Rougon you have Saccard, Eugène Rougon and Pascal Rougon.
NB: Was there a feeling that the social ills of the period that Zola was writing about, should be studied as much as the scientists would study hereditary disease?
VM: Absolutely, and Zola’s view was that however disgusting or even obscene, you must look at it closely, describe it accurately. It was important as if you were a doctor investigating a disease and the growth of the disease and all the symptoms of the disease. And then if you showed that properly, his view was that if you managed to show this effectively then somebody would do something about it, I mean the government, the people, would create a sort of grand swell if you like, of feeling. And indeed and quite to some extent he succeeded in that.
Featured image credit: Arbre généalogique des Rougon-Macquart annoté by Émile Zola. CC0 Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
The post Émile Zola and the Rougon-Macquart appeared first on OUPblog. Listen to, and read a transcript of an interview from Nicola Barranger for Oxford World's Classics with Valerie Minogue, translator of Money by Émile Zola, part of the Rougon-Macquart cycle. In the interview, she introduces the Rougon-Macquart, ... http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/153440956/_/oupblogmedia/http://blog.oup.com/2016/04/new-media-refugee-status/Why hasn’t the rise of new media transformed refugee status determination?http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OUPblogMedia/~3/8gTi4NWm1rw/
http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/151329768/_/oupblogmedia/#commentsTue, 26 Apr 2016 10:30:07 +0000http://blog.oup.com/?p=119648Information now moves at a much greater speed than migrants. In earlier eras, the arrival of refugees in flight was often the first indication that grave human rights abuses were underway in distant parts of the world.

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Information now moves at a much greater speed than migrants. In earlier eras, the arrival of refugees in flight was often the first indication that grave human rights abuses were underway in distant parts of the world. Since the advent of the Arab Spring in 2011, the role of new and social media as agents of transformation has become a staple of global assumptions about the power of technology to diversify political expression and facilitate networks for social change. The events of that year also triggered a heightened awareness of the promise of technology to bear witness to human rights violations.

By arming ‘citizen journalists’ with so called ‘liberation technology’ there is now capacity to document human rights abuses on an unprecedented scale. Given the need for better and more individualized evidence of rapidly evolving situations in refugee-producing states, what has been the impact of e-evidence on refugee status determination (RSD)?

New media are conduits for better and more accessible country of origin information. Over the past decade, the production and consumption of human rights documentation in refugee-producing countries has in theory been universalized by new technologies. Diminished costs and rising access have pluralized, if not fully democratized, the use of technology and information, and have increased and diversified the range of actors involved in the communications revolution. Paradoxically, for the many asylum seekers who claim a well-founded fear arising from events that are off the ‘radar’ of mainstream human rights reporting, this creates considerable challenges in terms of establishing the credibility of their claims. A framework for human rights reporting that still leaves much unreported has consequences in a world that presumes the reverse, given the overflow of information through the Internet. In the context of country of origin conditions, immigration lawyer Colin Yeo argues that this overflow ‘imbues us with dangerously false omniscience’.

Emerging technologies have, in principle, radically expanded the sources of country of origin information accessible to asylum seekers and decision makers, and narrowed the time in which information is received. Their potential, however, is significantly under-realized. The process of identifying country of origin information from new media sources is proving to be cumbersome, demanding expertise, time, and resources that are beyond the capabilities of officials and claimants alike.

Notwithstanding this, RSD authorities increasingly expect that sufficient information will be available that can meet the standards of evidence required to corroborate testimony in genuine asylum applications. In the United States, the RSD process increasingly relies upon the provision of expert reports and corroborating documentation to supplement the core of a claimant’s testimony. Yet underlying the expectation of corroboration is the presumption that such information will be available in the first place, given the resources accessible, with a few clicks of a mouse. Many asylum seekers are ill-equipped to provide this evidence, and when it is presented in the form of new media, decision-makers are disinclined to assess it. When addressed by the European Asylum Support Office (EASO) in its guidelines on processing country of origin information, new media was identified as a ‘dubious’ evidence source. Within RSD, the potential of the Internet and new technology is compromised by the fact that they fail to satisfy two of the core criteria for evidence required with respect to country of origin information: traceability and reliability of the source. It is not surprising that EASO’s perspective is shared widely by national decision-making authorities.

The tools of documentation include not only the Internet and new media, but a wide range of new communications and digital technology, including smartphones. These new technologies allow for real-time collection of human rights evidence as events unfold and abuses are committed, changing the way we witness and document human rights violations. Real-time human rights reporting in the cybersphere should, in principle, make it more difficult for country of origin information to acquire what Guy Goodwin-Gill and Jane McAdam have described as the ‘artificial quality of freezing time’, whereby decision makers accord single events a distorted significance. External sources of information from the Internet reflect the fluid nature of human rights situations and extend beyond traditional reports of media, NGOs, and civil society. The consequent volume of material is overwhelming. Roughly 30,000 new information items are added to UNHCR Refworld and the Austrian Centre for Country of Origin Information (ACCORD) each year. This implies access to more than 300,000 documents covering country of origin information and refugee-related legal and policy instruments, cases, and materials.

The potential of this abundant country of origin information and corroborative evidence depends on whether it can be accessed effectively, and if it can be authenticated and found to be reliable. E-evidence that asylum seekers can use to corroborate their oral testimony includes: official documents; digitally generated images and encoded audio and video recordings; ‘born-digital’ format files such as text and word processing files; crowd-sourced information such as web pages, blogs, Twitter posts, and other social media; networked communications such as email and text messages; and content recorded on mobile phones. As O’Neill et al note in their comprehensive examination of the complexities that attach to the use of e-evidence in criminal prosecutions, each type of e-evidence has different technical indicators of authenticity and reliability. In international human rights fora, the methods used to assess e-evidence are determined on a case-by-case basis in the absence of rules that address the categorical distinctions between sources of technology. Given the propensity for technology to outpace directive guidelines, this discretionary approach towards e-evidence is largely adopted by domestic courts and by administrative regimes responsible for asylum. Consequently, there is no standard protocol on e-evidence to guide RSD.

The power of e-evidence is linked to the capacity of individuals and organizations to satisfy the criteria required for effective authentication and reliability. The expertise required for this is not to be presumed, since it involves technical skills related to methods of collection and preservation, authentication practices, and chain of custody procedures. Organizations training NGOs in this field are strikingly few. For human rights evidence to be legally viable, there must be widespread grassroots awareness of the technical criteria that will be applied to e-evidence in legal fora, be they national or international criminal courts, human rights bodies, or RSD authorities. The challenge for the international human rights community is to construct an effective training framework to enhance the quality of e-evidence.

]]>http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/151329768/_/oupblogmedia/feed/1*Featured,asylum seekers,UNHCR Refworld,Journals,EASO,new media,ACCORD,human rights,international human rights community,Jane McAdam,oxford journals,Media,new technologies,social media,E-evidence,human rights documentation,RSD,Law,IJRL,refugee status determination,Austrian Centre for Country of Origin Information,refugee status,Guy Goodwin-Gil,human rights reporting,European Asylum Support Office,arab spring,International Journal of Refugee Law,NGOs,Rosemary Byrne,immigration,human rights violationsInformation now moves at a much greater speed than migrants. In earlier eras, the arrival of refugees in flight was often the first indication that grave human rights abuses were underway in distant parts of the world. Since the advent of the Arab Spring in 2011, the role of new and social media as agents of transformation has become a staple of global assumptions about the power of technology to diversify political expression and facilitate networks for social change. The events of that year also triggered a heightened awareness of the promise of technology to bear witness to human rights violations.
By arming ‘citizen journalists’ with so called ‘liberation technology’ there is now capacity to document human rights abuses on an unprecedented scale. Given the need for better and more individualized evidence of rapidly evolving situations in refugee-producing states, what has been the impact of e-evidence on refugee status determination (RSD)?
New media are conduits for better and more accessible country of origin information. Over the past decade, the production and consumption of human rights documentation in refugee-producing countries has in theory been universalized by new technologies. Diminished costs and rising access have pluralized, if not fully democratized, the use of technology and information, and have increased and diversified the range of actors involved in the communications revolution. Paradoxically, for the many asylum seekers who claim a well-founded fear arising from events that are off the ‘radar’ of mainstream human rights reporting, this creates considerable challenges in terms of establishing the credibility of their claims. A framework for human rights reporting that still leaves much unreported has consequences in a world that presumes the reverse, given the overflow of information through the Internet. In the context of country of origin conditions, immigration lawyer Colin Yeo argues that this overflow ‘imbues us with dangerously false omniscience’.
Emerging technologies have, in principle, radically expanded the sources of country of origin information accessible to asylum seekers and decision makers, and narrowed the time in which information is received. Their potential, however, is significantly under-realized. The process of identifying country of origin information from new media sources is proving to be cumbersome, demanding expertise, time, and resources that are beyond the capabilities of officials and claimants alike.
Notwithstanding this, RSD authorities increasingly expect that sufficient information will be available that can meet the standards of evidence required to corroborate testimony in genuine asylum applications. In the United States, the RSD process increasingly relies upon the provision of expert reports and corroborating documentation to supplement the core of a claimant’s testimony. Yet underlying the expectation of corroboration is the presumption that such information will be available in the first place, given the resources accessible, with a few clicks of a mouse. Many asylum seekers are ill-equipped to provide this evidence, and when it is presented in the form of new media, decision-makers are disinclined to assess it. When addressed by the European Asylum Support Office (EASO) in its guidelines on processing country of origin information, new media was identified as a ‘dubious’ evidence source. Within RSD, the potential of the Internet and new technology is compromised by the fact that they fail to satisfy two of the core criteria for evidence required with respect to country of origin information: traceability and reliability of the source. It is not surprising that EASO’s perspective is shared widely by national decision-making authorities.
The tools of documentation include not only the Internet and new media, but a wide range of new communications and digital ... Information now moves at a much greater speed than migrants. In earlier eras, the arrival of refugees in flight was often the first indication that grave human rights abuses were underway in distant parts of the world. Since the advent of the Arab ... http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/151329768/_/oupblogmedia/http://blog.oup.com/2016/04/information-revolution-american-economy/The invention of the information revolutionhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OUPblogMedia/~3/RHTw6B6mLls/
http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/149404090/_/oupblogmedia/#respondFri, 15 Apr 2016 09:30:54 +0000http://blog.oup.com/?p=118928The idea that the United States economy runs on information is so self-evident and commonly accepted today that it barely merits comment. There was an information revolution. America “stopped making stuff.” Computers changed everything. Everyone knows these things, because of an incessant stream of reinforcement from liberal intellectuals, corporate advertisers, and policymakers who take for granted that the US economy shifted toward an “knowledge-based” economy in the late twentieth century.

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The idea that the US economy runs on information is so self-evident and commonly accepted today that it barely merits comment. There was an information revolution. America “stopped making stuff.” Computers changed everything. Everyone knows these things, because of an incessant stream of reinforcement from liberal intellectuals, corporate advertisers, and policymakers who take for granted that the US economy shifted toward an “knowledge-based” economy in the late twentieth century.

Indeed, the idea of the information revolution has gone beyond cliché to become something like conventional wisdom, or even a natural feature of the universe like the freezing point of water or the incalculable value of π. Yet this notion has a history of its own, rooted in a concerted effort by high-tech companies in the 1960s to inoculate the American public against fears that computing and automation would lead to widespread job loss. The information revolution did not spring from the skull of Athena or emerge organically from the mysterious workings of the economy. It was invented.

Let’s go back to the 1950s. A young journalist named Daniel Bell was working for Fortune magazine, at a time when magazines for rich people actually employed thoughtful, perceptive social critics. He was one of several observers who began to notice that a fundamental shift was sweeping the United States; its industrial base, the “arsenal of democracy” that won World War II against fascism, was shrinking relative to other sectors of the economy, at least as a portion of employment. Around the same time, economist Colin Clark hypothesized that there were different sectors of the economy: primary (meaning agricultural and extractive industries), secondary (manufacturing) and tertiary (everything else). Other economists came along and refined the concept to distinguish between different types of “services,” but it was clear that greater productivity in industry—gained from automating the process of production and, eventually, offshoring work to take advantage of cheaper labor in the developing world—meant that an increasing proportion of Americans worked in fields such as retail, healthcare, and education, relative to the manufacturing sector that had so defined the US economy in the early to mid-twentieth century.

It was not just intellectuals such as Bell or Clark who realized this change was underway. The young radicals of the New Left recognized that the economy was undergoing a fundamental transformation, as pointed out in the seminal Port Huron Statement of 1962. The generation that was coming up in the universities realized that they would be taking charge of American life in offices and laboratories, as the real number of manufacturing workers had held steady relative to the growth of the rest of the economy since the late 1950s. They worried about a “remote control economy,” where workers and the unions that represented them were relatively diminished, and an incipient class of knowledge workers—a term that would not really gain currency until the 1970s—would hold a new sort of hegemonic power. In many ways, the New Left was the political expression of this class in its infancy.

But a new, postindustrial economy could have taken any number of forms. In fact, many commentators in the 1960s assumed that increasing automation would result in greater leisure and shorter working hours, since we could make more stuff with lesser work. It remained for high-tech firms such as IBM and RCA to set the terms for the way we understood the changing economy, and they did so with gusto. With the help of canny admen such as Marion Harper—who intoned in 1961, “to manage the future is to manage information”—they rolled out a public relations campaign that celebrated the “information revolution.” Computers would not kill jobs—they would create jobs. Computers would not result in a cold, impersonal, invasive new world, empowering governments and corporations at the expense of the little guy—they would make life more efficient and convenient.

Fears of technological unemployment were very real during the 1950s and 1960s. Few recall that unemployment rates in parts of the United States were as high as ten percent in the late 1950s, and Congressmen held hearings over the issue of jobs being displaced by new technology. At the same time, government—from the Post Office to the Pentagon—was the biggest buyer of computer technology by a wide margin. IBM needed government, and the US Census needed IBM to crunch its numbers. Hence, tech companies yearned to manage public opinion, and they enlisted the help of intellectuals such as media theorist Marshall McLuhan and anthropologist Margaret Mead to assuage anxieties about the implications of new technology. The latter contributed to a huge ad supplement taken out by the computer industry in the New York Times in 1965 called “The Information Revolution,” joining notables such as Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz in an effort to explain that automation was not the enemy. IBM’s competitor RCA set up a major public exhibition in Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center in 1967 with the same theme.

In other words, the very concept of an “information revolution” was introduced and explicitly promoted by powerful tech firms at a time when Americans were worried about their jobs and new technology. Like Don Draper’s famous toasted tobacco, it came from Madison Avenue. They lent shape and direction to inchoate and confusing shift in the political economy of the United States, by dint of shrewd marketing. However, we might have interpreted things differently. The future, as seen from the 1960s, might not have depended on the prerogatives of Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and other progenitors of intellectual property, but we have by and large been convinced that the fate of the nation lies in the hands of scientists, screenwriters, engineers, and all the other people who make the coin of the realm: information. It is worth considering, though, that America once had to be persuaded to believe that information was the inevitable future toward which we are all inexorably heading. As left activists are fond of saying, another world is possible—and once was.

Featured image credit: ‘The Hypertext Editing System (HES) console in use at Brown University, circa October 1969 by Greg Lloyd’ by McZusatz. CC-BY-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

]]>http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/149404090/_/oupblogmedia/feed/0new technology,*Featured,Technology,knowledge-based economy,computing,colin clark,marketing,Media,Books,Alex Sayf Cummings,socioeconomics,Information Revolution,marshal mcluhan,America,Technology Industry,Social Sciences,Music Piracy and the Remaking of American Copyright in the Twentieth Century,Democracy of Sound,Business & Economics,daniel bell,IBM,information technology,US economyThe idea that the US economy runs on information is so self-evident and commonly accepted today that it barely merits comment. There was an information revolution. America “stopped making stuff.” Computers changed everything. Everyone knows these things, because of an incessant stream of reinforcement from liberal intellectuals, corporate advertisers, and policymakers who take for granted that the US economy shifted toward an “knowledge-based” economy in the late twentieth century.
Indeed, the idea of the information revolution has gone beyond cliché to become something like conventional wisdom, or even a natural feature of the universe like the freezing point of water or the incalculable value of π. Yet this notion has a history of its own, rooted in a concerted effort by high-tech companies in the 1960s to inoculate the American public against fears that computing and automation would lead to widespread job loss. The information revolution did not spring from the skull of Athena or emerge organically from the mysterious workings of the economy. It was invented.
Let’s go back to the 1950s. A young journalist named Daniel Bell was working for Fortune magazine, at a time when magazines for rich people actually employed thoughtful, perceptive social critics. He was one of several observers who began to notice that a fundamental shift was sweeping the United States; its industrial base, the “arsenal of democracy” that won World War II against fascism, was shrinking relative to other sectors of the economy, at least as a portion of employment. Around the same time, economist Colin Clark hypothesized that there were different sectors of the economy: primary (meaning agricultural and extractive industries), secondary (manufacturing) and tertiary (everything else). Other economists came along and refined the concept to distinguish between different types of “services,” but it was clear that greater productivity in industry—gained from automating the process of production and, eventually, offshoring work to take advantage of cheaper labor in the developing world—meant that an increasing proportion of Americans worked in fields such as retail, healthcare, and education, relative to the manufacturing sector that had so defined the US economy in the early to mid-twentieth century. Student with vintage IBM computer. Technology by Brigham Young University – Idaho, David O McKay Library, Digital Asset Management. Public Domain via Digital Public Library of America
It was not just intellectuals such as Bell or Clark who realized this change was underway. The young radicals of the New Left recognized that the economy was undergoing a fundamental transformation, as pointed out in the seminal Port Huron Statement of 1962. The generation that was coming up in the universities realized that they would be taking charge of American life in offices and laboratories, as the real number of manufacturing workers had held steady relative to the growth of the rest of the economy since the late 1950s. They worried about a “remote control economy,” where workers and the unions that represented them were relatively diminished, and an incipient class of knowledge workers—a term that would not really gain currency until the 1970s—would hold a new sort of hegemonic power. In many ways, the New Left was the political expression of this class in its infancy.
But a new, postindustrial economy could have taken any number of forms. In fact, many commentators in the 1960s assumed that increasing automation would result in greater leisure and shorter working hours, since we could make more stuff with lesser work. It remained for high-tech firms such as IBM and RCA to set the terms for the way we understood the changing economy, and they did so with gusto. With the help of canny admen such as Marion Harper—who intoned in 1961, “to ... The idea that the US economy runs on information is so self-evident and commonly accepted today that it barely merits comment. There was an information revolution. America “stopped making stuff.” Computers changed everything.http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/149404090/_/oupblogmedia/http://blog.oup.com/2016/03/wonderland-middle-earth-material-world/A reimagined Wonderland, Middle-earth, and material worldhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OUPblogMedia/~3/MBaUWdapXEk/
http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/146918097/_/oupblogmedia/#respondThu, 31 Mar 2016 10:30:47 +0000http://blog.oup.com/?p=118964Lewis Carroll, J.R.R. Tolkein, and Philip Pullman are three of the many great writers to come out of Oxford, whose stories are continually reimagined and enjoyed through the use of media and digital technologies. The most obvious example for Carroll's Alice in Wonderland are the many adaptations in [...]

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Lewis Carroll, J.R.R. Tolkein, and Philip Pullman are three of the many great writers to come out of Oxford, whose stories are continually reimagined and enjoyed through the use of media and digital technologies. The most obvious examples for Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland are the many adaptations in theatre, film, and television. Tolkein’s The Lords of the Rings, with all of the facets of Middle-earth, has developed incredibly in the film and gaming industries. Pullman’s His Dark Materials has also seen success in film, particularly in the The Golden Compass, an adaptation based on the first novel in the trilogy.

In a discussion held at the Oxford Museum of National History, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst (Professor of English Literature, University of Oxford), Stuart Lee (Member of the English Faculty and Merton College, University of Oxford), and Margaret Kean (Helen Gardner Fellow in English, St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford) explore the use of media and its effects on these authors’ works. Together they raise questions and encourage conversation about how the use of digital tools gives stories new and diverse afterlives.

Featured Image: “Illustration from The Nursery “Alice”, containing twenty coloured enlargements from Tenniel’s illustrations to “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” with text adapted to nursery readers” by John Tenniel. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

]]>http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/146918097/_/oupblogmedia/feed/0*Featured,digital technologies,Alice in Wonderland,Oxford,fantasy,lord of the rings,Media,Philip Pullman,Books,His Dark Materials,J.R.R. Tolkien,stories,lewis carroll,Literature,TV & Film,VideosLewis Carroll, J.R.R. Tolkein, and Philip Pullman are three of the many great writers to come out of Oxford, whose stories are continually reimagined and enjoyed through the use of media and digital technologies. The most obvious examples for Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland are the many adaptations in theatre, film, and television. Tolkein's The Lords of the Rings, with all of the facets of Middle-earth, has developed incredibly in the film and gaming industries. Pullman's His Dark Materials has also seen success in film, particularly in the The Golden Compass, an adaptation based on the first novel in the trilogy.
In a discussion held at the Oxford Museum of National History, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst (Professor of English Literature, University of Oxford), Stuart Lee (Member of the English Faculty and Merton College, University of Oxford), and Margaret Kean (Helen Gardner Fellow in English, St Hilda's College, University of Oxford) explore the use of media and its effects on these authors' works. Together they raise questions and encourage conversation about how the use of digital tools gives stories new and diverse afterlives.
Featured Image: “Illustration from The Nursery “Alice”, containing twenty coloured enlargements from Tenniel's illustrations to “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,” with text adapted to nursery readers” by John Tenniel. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
The post A reimagined Wonderland, Middle-earth, and material world appeared first on OUPblog. Lewis Carroll, J.R.R. Tolkein, and Philip Pullman are three of the many great writers to come out of Oxford, whose stories are continually reimagined and enjoyed through the use of media and digital technologies.http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/146918097/_/oupblogmedia/http://blog.oup.com/2016/03/word-in-the-news-mastermind/Word in the news: Mastermindhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OUPblogMedia/~3/LgF9L89OZG4/
http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/146070582/_/oupblogmedia/#commentsSat, 26 Mar 2016 11:30:01 +0000http://blog.oup.com/?p=118622In a speech made after the November terrorist attacks in Paris, President Obama criticized the media’s use of the word mastermind to describe Abdelhamid Abaaoud. “He’s not a mastermind,” he stated. “He found a few other vicious people, got hands on some fairly conventional weapons, and sadly, it turns out that if you’re willing to die you can kill a lot of people.”

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In a speech made after the November terrorist attacks in Paris, President Obama criticized the media’s use of the word mastermind to describe Abdelhamid Abaaoud. “He’s not a mastermind,” he stated. “He found a few other vicious people, got hands on some fairly conventional weapons, and sadly, it turns out that if you’re willing to die you can kill a lot of people.”

Why did Obama single out this particular word? What in its history and current use make it a problematic term?

The first masterminds

To find out, we need to go back to the 17th century. Currently, the first citation for mastermind in the Oxford English Dictionary is John Dryden’s play Cleomenes, of 1692: “A Soul, not conscious to it self of Ill, Undaunted Courage, and a Master-mind.” Here, and for nearly 200 years to follow, the term was solely a positive one, used to describe “a person with an outstanding intellect.” In 1720, in his translation of the Illiad, Alexander Pope chose it to describe Vulcan’s creation of the Shield of Achilles, reflecting the noble, godlike associations of the word, and tying it to the concept of creative genius: “There shone the image of the master-mind./There earth, there heaven, there ocean he design’d.”

It is not until 1872 that the word is recorded with any negative connotations. In Anthony Trollope’s novel The Eustace Diamonds, Lord George de Bruce Carruthers complains that “up to this week past every man in the police thought that I had been the mastermind among the thieves,” giving the term its first whiff of criminality. A new meaning was established, namely: “a person who plans and directs an ingenious and complex scheme or enterprise” – and came to be strongly associated with wrongdoing.

This new meaning did not eclipse the “outstanding intellect” sense, however, with both uses well evidenced throughout the 20th century. Today, the term continues to be used in positive, admiring contexts, including the long-running British quiz show Mastermind (1972-present). Our language databases show numerous modern examples where it describes creative genius, such as the filmmaker who “is a mastermind, and only does something if its better or different than his last piece”; the musician who is “the creative mastermind behind this album”; and the writer of a successful TV series who is described as “the mastermind behind this masterwork of a show.”

Positive or negative?

One of the problems Obama was referring to with this word, therefore, is its continued positive associations – it is used to describe exceptional people, who have produced great creative works, and is therefore – he suggests – not appropriate to describe a terrorist. Despite this positive sheen, the term has become strongly linked to criminality. The Oxford English Corpus shows that the words most associated with mastermind are a felonious group – criminal, terrorist, and evil are among the most common types of mastermind in our databases, and they are most usually found attacking, plotting, and bombing. Alleged and suspectedmasterminds are also extremely common, demonstrating that the word is a favourite of news reports. Indeed, the term could be described as part of the shorthand of journalese – and it comes as no surprise that it appears more than twice as often in news reports as it does in any other type of writing.

The other realm in which mastermind is commonly found is that of film. The diabolical mastermind (another common collocation on the Oxford English Corpus) is a caricature familiar from hundreds of spy and action movies. That we choose this word to describe people who commit acts of terror in the real world is both unsurprising and unsettling. Most people are only able to process acts of extreme violence in terms of what they have seen on the screen – it is common, in the wake of attacks or disasters, to hear the people involved describe what has occurred as “like something from a film.” In the same way, the people responsible for such acts of violence – the terrorists – are associated with Hollywood supervillains. It is easier to frame these people as fictional, one-dimensional, “evil” characters, than to see them as mere humans, and attempt to understand their actions on that basis. The world of films is clearer cut, more black and white, less troubled by moral ambiguity.

This association with Hollywood also gives mastermind a kind of glamour, a certain desirability. Two other phrases commonly seen in the Oxford English Corpus are self-proclaimed mastermind and self-described mastermind. Clearly, this is a label that certain people wish to attach to themselves, despite – or, perhaps in some cases, because of – its association with notorious terrorist acts. It glorifies the people behind these acts, placing them on a pedestal alongside the invincible criminal geniuses of fiction and film.

Which word to use instead?

So what are the alternatives? Ringleader has been suggested, and has been seen in several recent newspaper reports of terrorist activities. Defined as “a person who initiates or leads an illicit or illegal activity,” this is more transparently negative, and is rarely used as a “self-proclaimed” label in the way that mastermind is. Commander is another alternative, though this word’s associations with organized military leadership may raise objections to its use to describe terrorists. A more neutral alternative is organizer, which the Oxford English Corpus shows is used in a range of contexts, from festivals and conferences to protests and raves.

Of course, there is no perfect choice. No words are truly neutral (if neutrality is even what we are seeking) or, for that matter, wholly positive or negative. Words are fluid: they do not exist in isolation, but gain their meaning from the contexts in which they are used, and the associations they gain from them. Those associations have the power to make us feel a certain way – fear or courage, unity or discord. And that power is ours, in the words we choose to describe and explain the often incomprehensible events around us.

]]>http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/146070582/_/oupblogmedia/feed/1terrorism,*Featured,criminal,language,oxford dictionaries,Media,Language,Barack Obama,Charlotte Buxton,ringleader,anthony trollope,oxford english dictionary,the eustace diamonds,Dictionaries & Lexicography,OxfordWords blog,mastermind,PoliticsIn a speech made after the November terrorist attacks in Paris, President Obama criticized the media’s use of the word mastermind to describe Abdelhamid Abaaoud. “He’s not a mastermind,” he stated. “He found a few other vicious people, got hands on some fairly conventional weapons, and sadly, it turns out that if you’re willing to die you can kill a lot of people.”
Why did Obama single out this particular word? What in its history and current use make it a problematic term?
The first masterminds
To find out, we need to go back to the 17th century. Currently, the first citation for mastermind in the Oxford English Dictionary is John Dryden’s play Cleomenes, of 1692: “A Soul, not conscious to it self of Ill, Undaunted Courage, and a Master-mind.” Here, and for nearly 200 years to follow, the term was solely a positive one, used to describe “a person with an outstanding intellect.” In 1720, in his translation of the Illiad, Alexander Pope chose it to describe Vulcan’s creation of the Shield of Achilles, reflecting the noble, godlike associations of the word, and tying it to the concept of creative genius: “There shone the image of the master-mind./There earth, there heaven, there ocean he design’d.”
It is not until 1872 that the word is recorded with any negative connotations. In Anthony Trollope’s novel The Eustace Diamonds, Lord George de Bruce Carruthers complains that “up to this week past every man in the police thought that I had been the mastermind among the thieves,” giving the term its first whiff of criminality. A new meaning was established, namely: “a person who plans and directs an ingenious and complex scheme or enterprise” – and came to be strongly associated with wrongdoing.
This new meaning did not eclipse the “outstanding intellect” sense, however, with both uses well evidenced throughout the 20th century. Today, the term continues to be used in positive, admiring contexts, including the long-running British quiz show Mastermind (1972-present). Our language databases show numerous modern examples where it describes creative genius, such as the filmmaker who “is a mastermind, and only does something if its better or different than his last piece”; the musician who is “the creative mastermind behind this album”; and the writer of a successful TV series who is described as “the mastermind behind this masterwork of a show.”
Positive or negative?
One of the problems Obama was referring to with this word, therefore, is its continued positive associations – it is used to describe exceptional people, who have produced great creative works, and is therefore – he suggests – not appropriate to describe a terrorist. Despite this positive sheen, the term has become strongly linked to criminality. The Oxford English Corpus shows that the words most associated with mastermind are a felonious group – criminal, terrorist, and evil are among the most common types of mastermind in our databases, and they are most usually found attacking, plotting, and bombing. Alleged and suspected masterminds are also extremely common, demonstrating that the word is a favourite of news reports. Indeed, the term could be described as part of the shorthand of journalese – and it comes as no surprise that it appears more than twice as often in news reports as it does in any other type of writing.
The other realm in which mastermind is commonly found is that of film. The diabolical mastermind (another common collocation on the Oxford English Corpus) is a caricature familiar from hundreds of spy and action movies. That we choose this word to describe people who commit acts of terror in the real world is both unsurprising and unsettling. Most people are only able to process acts of extreme ... In a speech made after the November terrorist attacks in Paris, President Obama criticized the media’s use of the word mastermind to describe Abdelhamid Abaaoud. “He’s not a mastermind,” he stated.http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/146070582/_/oupblogmedia/http://blog.oup.com/2016/03/wikileaks-hacktivism-transparency/Exposures from the dark sidehttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OUPblogMedia/~3/K9NvQ656RuM/
http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/143906454/_/oupblogmedia/#commentsMon, 14 Mar 2016 08:30:28 +0000http://blog.oup.com/?p=118470Julian Assange is an unusual figure in the world of hacktivism. He embraced his notoriety as leader of Wikileaks, and on 4 February 2016, he appeared on the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy holding a copy of a UN panel report that declared that he has been “arbitrarily detained” while avoiding extradition to Sweden for alleged rape for almost six years (British and Swedish prosecutors still seek to detain him).

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Julian Assange is an unusual figure in the world of hacktivism. He embraced his notoriety as leader of Wikileaks, and on 4 February 2016, he appeared on the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy holding a copy of a UN panel report that declared that he has been “arbitrarily detained” while avoiding extradition to Sweden for alleged rape for almost six years (British and Swedish prosecutors still seek to detain him).

There was more than a hint of a double standard in Assange’s demands that the UK should defer legally to the UN panel. Hacktivism often seems to disregard legal constraints in force in the offline world. It is typically anonymous, making it hard to hold people to account when things go wrong. It is not always open or democratic — even when it is practised in jurisdictions with strong democratic traditions.

Wikileaks allegedly exposes the wrongdoing of governments and other powerful global actors, based on inside information given to it by leakers or hackers. Yet the transparency it demands of others does not apply to itself. It collects its leaks through electronic drop boxes that it has helped to design to protect the anonymity of its sources. Wikileaks claims to support human rights and to engage in processes of democratic accountability, but its own failure to disclose much information about itself denudes its credibility and contributes to an objectionable kind of impunity.

Consider the difference between Wikileaks and two of the media organizations with which it cooperated: The Guardian and The New York Times. Both newspapers have a long tradition of investigative journalism and have engaged in big journalistic exposures, sometimes based on leaks. Their journalists fact check articles, edit them in ways to make large amounts of information digestible by their audiences (not to mislead), and sign their names. Their (publicly known) headquarters are located in countries with strict libel laws and laws prohibiting hacking, even in the service of bona fide investigative journalism. When they make mistakes, they issue retractions and often apologize or pay damages. They are also open when they or their journalists are guilty of fraud or of some other kind of criminal activity.

Wikileaks is systematically different. Although it says quite a lot about its convictions on its website, it displays no masthead identifying its editors, and, apart from Julian Assange, few people connected with the organization in general or its news gathering in particular have ever been named. This might make sense if those running Wikileaks were based in human rights-violating jurisdictions, but it is known that much Wikileaks technology is based in Scandinavia, where there is no tradition of censorship or government interference in the media. Since Wikileaks does not necessarily go in for disclosures that are more far-reaching than those of its mainstream collaborators, it is unclear why it is so shadowy. On the contrary, its secrecy about itself detracts from both the credibility of its news and the credibility of its adherence to human rights. Though Wikileaks claims to check all its information before publishing, it does not back up this claim with an indication of numbers of people working for it, or their competence, or the methods by which information is tested for accuracy and authenticity. This would be bad enough in a media organization with a relatively local coverage, but Wikileaks publishes leaks about the powerful in a wide array of countries. Again, it has not been quick to report allegations of wrongdoing by its own employees. On the contrary, it has avoided doing so. For example, it did not publicize charges of sexual assault against Assange in Sweden. Finally, its dumps of documents with identifying details of individuals have sometimes put people in danger.

Wikileaks illustrates some of the difficulties of human rights-supporting journalism conducted anonymously and from the legal no-man’s land of cyberspace.

]]>http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/143906454/_/oupblogmedia/feed/5Journal of Human Rights Practice,*Featured,julian assange,Journals,JHRP,cyberspace,human rights,WikiLeaks,oxford journals,Media,journalism,Law,hackers,Tom Sorell,hacktivism,PoliticsJulian Assange is an unusual figure in the world of hacktivism. He embraced his notoriety as leader of Wikileaks, and on 4 February 2016, he appeared on the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy holding a copy of a UN panel report that declared that he has been “arbitrarily detained” while avoiding extradition to Sweden for alleged rape for almost six years (British and Swedish prosecutors still seek to detain him).
There was more than a hint of a double standard in Assange’s demands that the UK should defer legally to the UN panel. Hacktivism often seems to disregard legal constraints in force in the offline world. It is typically anonymous, making it hard to hold people to account when things go wrong. It is not always open or democratic — even when it is practised in jurisdictions with strong democratic traditions.
Wikileaks allegedly exposes the wrongdoing of governments and other powerful global actors, based on inside information given to it by leakers or hackers. Yet the transparency it demands of others does not apply to itself. It collects its leaks through electronic drop boxes that it has helped to design to protect the anonymity of its sources. Wikileaks claims to support human rights and to engage in processes of democratic accountability, but its own failure to disclose much information about itself denudes its credibility and contributes to an objectionable kind of impunity.
Consider the difference between Wikileaks and two of the media organizations with which it cooperated: The Guardian and The New York Times. Both newspapers have a long tradition of investigative journalism and have engaged in big journalistic exposures, sometimes based on leaks. Their journalists fact check articles, edit them in ways to make large amounts of information digestible by their audiences (not to mislead), and sign their names. Their (publicly known) headquarters are located in countries with strict libel laws and laws prohibiting hacking, even in the service of bona fide investigative journalism. When they make mistakes, they issue retractions and often apologize or pay damages. They are also open when they or their journalists are guilty of fraud or of some other kind of criminal activity.
Wikileaks is systematically different. Although it says quite a lot about its convictions on its website, it displays no masthead identifying its editors, and, apart from Julian Assange, few people connected with the organization in general or its news gathering in particular have ever been named. This might make sense if those running Wikileaks were based in human rights-violating jurisdictions, but it is known that much Wikileaks technology is based in Scandinavia, where there is no tradition of censorship or government interference in the media. Since Wikileaks does not necessarily go in for disclosures that are more far-reaching than those of its mainstream collaborators, it is unclear why it is so shadowy. On the contrary, its secrecy about itself detracts from both the credibility of its news and the credibility of its adherence to human rights. Though Wikileaks claims to check all its information before publishing, it does not back up this claim with an indication of numbers of people working for it, or their competence, or the methods by which information is tested for accuracy and authenticity. This would be bad enough in a media organization with a relatively local coverage, but Wikileaks publishes leaks about the powerful in a wide array of countries. Again, it has not been quick to report allegations of wrongdoing by its own employees. On the contrary, it has avoided doing so. For example, it did not publicize charges of sexual assault against Assange in Sweden. Finally, its dumps of documents with identifying details of individuals have sometimes put people in danger.
Wikileaks illustrates some of the difficulties of human rights-supporting journalism conducted anonymously and from the ... Julian Assange is an unusual figure in the world of hacktivism. He embraced his notoriety as leader of Wikileaks, and on 4 February 2016, he appeared on the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy holding a copy of a UN panel report that declared that he ... http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/143906454/_/oupblogmedia/http://blog.oup.com/2016/03/changing-library-collections/Building library collections – change and reviewhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OUPblogMedia/~3/LVwpZYr0dzs/
http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/143120388/_/oupblogmedia/#respondThu, 10 Mar 2016 11:30:25 +0000http://blog.oup.com/?p=118551Libraries have been primarily identified by their collections – by those accessing the resources collected by individual libraries and for those not directly engaging imagining access. When Borges wrote “Paradise is a library, not a garden" he captured the concept of the library as a palace for the mind, connecting readers to the generations of works – from maps, manuscripts and incunabula to the new online resources of today.

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Libraries have been primarily identified by their collections – by those accessing the resources collected by individual libraries and for those not directly engaging imagining access. When Borges wrote “Paradise is a library, not a garden” he captured the concept of the library as a palace for the mind, connecting readers to the generations of works – from maps, manuscripts and incunabula to the new online resources of today. If the physical form is the key to our identity, the question arises as to what our collections should be in such times of change. Many of these trends reflect fundamental changes in scholarly communication in the networked age that contribute to scholarship, often in anticipation of shifts in the academy and changes in scholarly communication.

In Australia, the Group of Eight comprises Australia’s eight leading research universities – The University of Melbourne, The Australian National University, The University of Sydney, The University of Queensland, The University of Western Australia, The University of Adelaide, Monash University and UNSW. Evaluations of the needs of academics and higher degree students undertaken in recent years suggest that the fundamental role of the library is multifaceted and increasingly supporting scholarly activities beyond physical collections.

Five of the university libraries undertook a study of current client needs and perceived roles using Ithaka S+R, a US based not-for-profit organisation with a tool that evaluates libraries. The study, conducted primarily of academics and postgraduates, found that the primary roles of the academic library were:

‘How important is it to you that your university library provides each of the functions below?’

The study found a high value for the libraries as collectors and repositories, with strong emerging needs for research skills and support for education. These newer roles are even more significant in an online world where a single keystroke can delete a lifetime’s work. The complexity of the scholarly communication system is creating a need for new services. Interestingly, the nature and quality of services provided by libraries in the print environment translates to the capabilities required to support online scholarship. Expertise in dissemination of research, publishing expertise, managing research data as an archival asset are highly value added skills fully applicable in the online environment.

A different set of insights have been obtained from a study of academics and postgraduates undertaken by Professor Carol Tenopir, School of Information Sciences at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and the Director of Research for the College of Communication and Information, and Director of the Center for Information and Communication Studies. A recent study at the Australian University added to the substantial research already undertaken as part of the Lib-Value project.

The overarching project has found the Australian university libraries are the strongest source of readings for academics and postgraduates. For comparison while UK and US libraries are also the primary sources for journals (67 and 55 percent respectively), while Australian libraries are the source of 69 percent of journal articles. Postgraduates overall have 69 percent of their journal article readings from libraries and 51 per cent of books, nine and six percent higher respectively than in the United States.

The study at the Australian National University provided a deep dive into information behaviours. The impact of libraries was significant. Academic staff who published 5-10 items in the last two years read the most books and other publications. The fundamental importance of the library is revealed in the time devoted by academics to reading. Academic staff on average spend 133 hours per year with library-provided material, equivalent to 16.6 eight-hour days annually reading material provided by the library.

Postgraduate students could well be analysed as living in the library. Postgraduate students, on average, spend 254 hours per year of their work time with library-provided material, or the equivalent of 31.75 eight-hour days annually. 100 per cent of postgraduate students used the library collections online.

Both these sets of studies point to a set of library services that are building and communicating knowledge in print and increasingly digital. The fundamental capabilities of libraries are being recognised as vital by students and academics challenged by the digital environment.

Changes: the exchange rate and collecting

Collection building can be affected by changes external to libraries and universities. The dramatic fall in the exchange rate in Australia over the past four years has had a significant effect on the purchasing power of libraries.

Collection review has seen a focused review across the region.

At the Australian National University Library, the review of titles, in particular subscriptions and databases, has built upon a methodology and process developed by Deakin University. The major factors taken into consideration are:

Relevance to research and teaching

Cost and use

Cost per use

Competitor products

Degree of uniqueness

Workflow costs – cataloguing, processing

In continuing to develop the whole collection, the library is conscious that:

the value in resources is not just immediate use, longer term issues of research and teaching need to be considered

we are curating a collection that needs to serve a community with a strong corpus of knowledge that can be seen as an integrated collection built over time

there are opportunity costs – some resources must be acquired while they are available as they may only be available for purchase for a short period of time.

The scholars of the future

Overall the building of collections is key to the library’s role in supporting the scholars of the present and future. The complex nature of collections and resources means that while we need to move budget to invest in growth of services such as data management, the collection remains critical to delivering support for research and teaching.

These new roles for the library position the flourishing of research capabilities and knowledge that support the next generation of policy makers, researchers and community members.

Creating a world where knowledge and scholarly communication capabilities are greater will remain a major challenge for the future.

At the recent conference Scholarly communication beyond paywalls, it was clear that the current model of control of scholarly outputs is insufficient to support an innovative, knowledge based world. While open access policies and movements have achieved much, the majority of scholarly works remain inaccessible to many. We need to work with publishers to deliver a new world in the coming years.

]]>http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/143120388/_/oupblogmedia/feed/0Australian National University,*Featured,research,collections,Media,Roxanne Missingham,Education,university library,librarians,scholar,libraries,LibraryLibraries have been primarily identified by their collections – by those accessing the resources collected by individual libraries and for those not directly engaging imagining access. When Borges wrote “Paradise is a library, not a garden” he captured the concept of the library as a palace for the mind, connecting readers to the generations of works – from maps, manuscripts and incunabula to the new online resources of today. If the physical form is the key to our identity, the question arises as to what our collections should be in such times of change. Many of these trends reflect fundamental changes in scholarly communication in the networked age that contribute to scholarship, often in anticipation of shifts in the academy and changes in scholarly communication.
In Australia, the Group of Eight comprises Australia’s eight leading research universities – The University of Melbourne, The Australian National University, The University of Sydney, The University of Queensland, The University of Western Australia, The University of Adelaide, Monash University and UNSW. Evaluations of the needs of academics and higher degree students undertaken in recent years suggest that the fundamental role of the library is multifaceted and increasingly supporting scholarly activities beyond physical collections.
Five of the university libraries undertook a study of current client needs and perceived roles using Ithaka S+R, a US based not-for-profit organisation with a tool that evaluates libraries. The study, conducted primarily of academics and postgraduates, found that the primary roles of the academic library were:
‘How important is it to you that your university library provides each of the functions below?’
- Buyer– ‘The library pays for resources faculty members need, from academic journals to books to electronic databases’ - Archive- ‘The library serves as a repository of resources; in other words, it archives, preserves, and keeps track of resources’ - Gateway- ‘The library serves as a starting point or ‘gateway’ for locating information for faculty research’ - Research- ‘The library provides active support that helps increase the productivity of my research and scholarship’ - Teaching- ‘The library supports and facilitates faculty teaching activities’ - Student support- ‘The library helps students develop research, critical analysis, and information literacy skills’
The study found a high value for the libraries as collectors and repositories, with strong emerging needs for research skills and support for education. These newer roles are even more significant in an online world where a single keystroke can delete a lifetime’s work. The complexity of the scholarly communication system is creating a need for new services. Interestingly, the nature and quality of services provided by libraries in the print environment translates to the capabilities required to support online scholarship. Expertise in dissemination of research, publishing expertise, managing research data as an archival asset are highly value added skills fully applicable in the online environment.
A different set of insights have been obtained from a study of academics and postgraduates undertaken by Professor Carol Tenopir, School of Information Sciences at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and the Director of Research for the College of Communication and Information, and Director of the Center for Information and Communication Studies. A recent study at the Australian University added to the substantial research already undertaken as part of the Lib-Value project.
The overarching project has found the Australian university libraries are the strongest source of readings for academics and postgraduates. For comparison while UK and US libraries are also the primary ... Libraries have been primarily identified by their collections – by those accessing the resources collected by individual libraries and for those not directly engaging imagining access. When Borges wrote “Paradise is a library, not a ... http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/143120388/_/oupblogmedia/http://blog.oup.com/2016/02/reading-digital-devices/Concentrate! The challenges of reading onscreenhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OUPblogMedia/~3/H91rXytvd1E/
http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/140071370/_/oupblogmedia/#commentsWed, 24 Feb 2016 11:30:58 +0000http://blog.oup.com/?p=117824Our lives are full of distractions: overheard conversations, the neighbor’s lawnmower, a baby crying in the row behind us, pop-up ads on our computers. Much of the time we can mentally dismiss their presence. But what about when we are reading? I have been studying how people read with printed text versus on digital devices.

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Our lives are full of distractions: overheard conversations, the neighbor’s lawnmower, a baby crying in the row behind us, pop-up ads on our computers. Much of the time we can mentally dismiss their presence. But what about when we are reading?

I have been studying how people read with printed text versus on digital devices. Both media have virtues and drawbacks. But one standout issue concerns our ability to concentrate on the words in front of us. Do we focus as well while reading on a screen as when those same words are on a printed page?

The data suggest we don’t. My surveys of university students in five countries—the United States, Japan, Germany, Slovakia, and India—asked about the medium on which these young adults concentrated the best: print, a computer, an eReader, a tablet, or a mobile phone. Of the more than 400 respondents, 92% said print. In reporting what they like most about reading hard copy, respondents said things such as “You can concentrate better” and “feels like the content sticks in your head more easily.” When it came to complaints about reading digitally, replies included “danger of distraction” and “no concentration.” Other researchers have reported similar results.

Some of the reasons people get distracted when they read online are obvious. With computers, it’s easy to multitask, toggling between a Wikipedia article on the Zika virus and a live cam of Carnival in Rio. We hear a ping on our mobile phones and rush to find out who’s texting us, abandoning that article we were reading from the digital New York Times. On our tablets, we keep a game of Angry Birds going at the same time that we are working through Go Set a Watchman.

Yet there’s another challenge to our concentration when we read on a digital screen with internet connection, and that is extraneous images and messages. Those ads that clutter our every web search. Those dancing images that snatch away our attention. Those banners plastered over the text we’re trying to read until we figure out how to extinguish them.

Such distractions aren’t limited to the likes of commercial weather sites or discount travel pages. They show up on mainstream publications like Fortune. Do you want to read breaking news about the death of Antonin Scalia? While you’re at it, how about a Celebrity cruise or an Amex sale on select hotels? Return to the site 30 seconds later, and you’ll find the same article, but perhaps a whole new set of offers, beckoning.

More troubling is that distractions show up when we are trying to do serious reading online. Recently I came upon an eloquent essay called “The Future of the Humanities” by Washington Post book critic Michael Dirda. You can find the article from the magazine Humanities on the website of the National Endowment for the Humanities. However, that’s not where I originally encountered it. Instead, I stumbled upon the piece reposted on the website of the Pacific Standard, where I was barraged with sidebar ads for Amazon’s Audible and TripAdvisor’s recommendations for hotels in Anchorage, along with in-text temptations from Saks Fifth Avenue. Even though I was deeply interested in what Dirda had to say, the siren call of Alaska kept pulling my eyes away, along with my mind.

The problem most squarely hit home when I came across a piece on BuzzFeed that described my own research. A central finding of those studies—though not specifically referenced in the article—was problems of concentrating while reading onscreen. The BuzzFeed story was visually delightful but a model of distraction: an animated GIF of an old-fashioned young woman with a book, a colorful still tableau of a hand removing a volume from a library shelf, and then another animated GIF, this time of a cartoon maiden (courtesy of Disney) gliding along a classic library ladder. All fun to watch, but the result was to reduce the text into a side dish for the main entertainment course.

Reading onscreen is not going away, nor are those ads and waltzing GIFs. If the content of what we are trying to read matters to us, we need to develop coping strategies. The task is not a simple one. Given the commercial model for funding the majority of websites, it’s hard to imagine a wholesale return to the once pristine, ad-free pages of Google. And recognizing our human desire to be amused, after the public tires of GIFs, something equally distracting will surely take their place.

I don’t have a solution in my hip pocket. Rather, for now, I challenge those who care about the written word—teachers, parents, students, researchers, and readers of all ilk—to take the problem seriously. Acknowledging distractions when reading onscreen is a necessary first step.

]]>http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/140071370/_/oupblogmedia/feed/4*Featured,Linguistics,Technology,Tablet Reading,naomi baron,Words Onscreen,digital reading,Media,News Consumption,The Fate of Reading in a Digital World,Books,Internet Reading,Online Media,Digital Ads,Digital Reading Devices,online reading,digital publishing,e-readingOur lives are full of distractions: overheard conversations, the neighbor’s lawnmower, a baby crying in the row behind us, pop-up ads on our computers. Much of the time we can mentally dismiss their presence. But what about when we are reading?
I have been studying how people read with printed text versus on digital devices. Both media have virtues and drawbacks. But one standout issue concerns our ability to concentrate on the words in front of us. Do we focus as well while reading on a screen as when those same words are on a printed page?
The data suggest we don’t. My surveys of university students in five countries—the United States, Japan, Germany, Slovakia, and India—asked about the medium on which these young adults concentrated the best: print, a computer, an eReader, a tablet, or a mobile phone. Of the more than 400 respondents, 92% said print. In reporting what they like most about reading hard copy, respondents said things such as “You can concentrate better” and “feels like the content sticks in your head more easily.” When it came to complaints about reading digitally, replies included “danger of distraction” and “no concentration.” Other researchers have reported similar results.
Some of the reasons people get distracted when they read online are obvious. With computers, it’s easy to multitask, toggling between a Wikipedia article on the Zika virus and a live cam of Carnival in Rio. We hear a ping on our mobile phones and rush to find out who’s texting us, abandoning that article we were reading from the digital New York Times. On our tablets, we keep a game of Angry Birds going at the same time that we are working through Go Set a Watchman.
Yet there’s another challenge to our concentration when we read on a digital screen with internet connection, and that is extraneous images and messages. Those ads that clutter our every web search. Those dancing images that snatch away our attention. Those banners plastered over the text we’re trying to read until we figure out how to extinguish them. “Tablet Reading” by Unsplash. CC0 via Pixabay.
Such distractions aren’t limited to the likes of commercial weather sites or discount travel pages. They show up on mainstream publications like Fortune. Do you want to read breaking news about the death of Antonin Scalia? While you’re at it, how about a Celebrity cruise or an Amex sale on select hotels? Return to the site 30 seconds later, and you’ll find the same article, but perhaps a whole new set of offers, beckoning.
More troubling is that distractions show up when we are trying to do serious reading online. Recently I came upon an eloquent essay called “The Future of the Humanities” by Washington Post book critic Michael Dirda. You can find the article from the magazine Humanities on the website of the National Endowment for the Humanities. However, that’s not where I originally encountered it. Instead, I stumbled upon the piece reposted on the website of the Pacific Standard, where I was barraged with sidebar ads for Amazon’s Audible and TripAdvisor’s recommendations for hotels in Anchorage, along with in-text temptations from Saks Fifth Avenue. Even though I was deeply interested in what Dirda had to say, the siren call of Alaska kept pulling my eyes away, along with my mind.
The problem most squarely hit home when I came across a piece on BuzzFeed that described my own research. A central finding of those studies—though not specifically referenced in the article—was problems of concentrating while reading onscreen. The BuzzFeed story was visually delightful but a model of distraction: an animated GIF of an old-fashioned young woman with a book, a colorful still tableau of a hand removing a volume from a library shelf, and then another animated GIF, this time of ... Our lives are full of distractions: overheard conversations, the neighbor’s lawnmower, a baby crying in the row behind us, pop-up ads on our computers. Much of the time we can mentally dismiss their presence. But what about when we are reading?http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/140071370/_/oupblogmedia/http://blog.oup.com/2016/02/ims-music-reference-encyclopedia-discussion/Music reference: Encyclopedias of the past, present, and futurehttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OUPblogMedia/~3/b70bHzZKluw/
http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/138238741/_/oupblogmedia/#commentsTue, 16 Feb 2016 09:30:52 +0000http://blog.oup.com/?p=117559How does one grapple with music research in the digital age? What are the changes and challenges therein? On 23 June 2015, a group of distinguished academics and editors came together for a panel discussion on “Referencing music in the twenty-first century: Encyclopedias of the past, present, and future” at a conference organized by the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centers (IAML) and the International Musicological Society (IMS).

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How does one grapple with music research in the digital age? What are the changes and challenges therein? On 23 June 2015, a group of distinguished academics and editors came together for a panel discussion on “Referencing music in the twenty-first century: Encyclopedias of the past, present, and future” at a conference organized by the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centers (IAML) and the International Musicological Society (IMS). The participants were Anna-Lise Santella, Editor of Grove Music Online; Don M. Randel, Editor of the Harvard Dictionary of Music; Harry White, Co-general Editor of Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland; Hanns Werner Heister, Co-editor of the Komponisten der Gegenwart; Laurenz Lütteken, Editor in Chief of Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart; Tina Frühauf (Chair), Editor of Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale; and Álvaro Torrente of the Diccionario de Música Española e Hispanoamericana. The conversation was wide ranging and covered topics as diverse as Wikipedia, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s early music dictionary, and Irish musical lexicography. The videos below cover some of the key themes raised by the panelists.

]]>http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/138238741/_/oupblogmedia/feed/1*Featured,music research,Arts & Humanities,Media,Music,callum watts,music reference,Online products,Grove Music Online,ims conference,wikipedia,music publishing,Encyclopedias,VideosHow does one grapple with music research in the digital age? What are the changes and challenges therein? On 23 June 2015, a group of distinguished academics and editors came together for a panel discussion on “Referencing music in the twenty-first century: Encyclopedias of the past, present, and future” at a conference organized by the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centers (IAML) and the International Musicological Society (IMS). The participants were Anna-Lise Santella, Editor of Grove Music Online; Don M. Randel, Editor of the Harvard Dictionary of Music; Harry White, Co-general Editor of Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland; Hanns Werner Heister, Co-editor of the Komponisten der Gegenwart; Laurenz Lütteken, Editor in Chief of Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart; Tina Frühauf (Chair), Editor of Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale; and Álvaro Torrente of the Diccionario de Música Española e Hispanoamericana. The conversation was wide ranging and covered topics as diverse as Wikipedia, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s early music dictionary, and Irish musical lexicography. The videos below cover some of the key themes raised by the panelists.
Many thanks to RILM and the IAML/IMS Programme Committee for organizing such a successful event!
Introducing the speakers
Musicology and music reference
How are music reference texts reflective of the time they are written in?
The effect of Wikipedia on music encyclopedias
What are some challenges that music encyclopedias face?
Headline image credit: Sara Levine for Oxford University Press.
The post Music reference: Encyclopedias of the past, present, and future appeared first on OUPblog. How does one grapple with music research in the digital age? What are the changes and challenges therein? On 23 June 2015, a group of distinguished academics and editors came together for a panel discussion on “Referencing music in the ... http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/138238741/_/oupblogmedia/